


Help Is On The Way

by okoriwadsworth



Series: Saving Each Other [3]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: BAMF Laurel Lance, BAMF Oliver Queen, Bad Parent Malcolm Merlyn, Evil Kate Kane, F/M, Laurel Lance is the Black Canary, Oliver Queen is The Green Arrow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:01:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 51,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26561830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okoriwadsworth/pseuds/okoriwadsworth
Relationships: Barry Allen/Kara Danvers, Laurel Lance/Oliver Queen
Series: Saving Each Other [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1929484
Comments: 43
Kudos: 28





	1. Chapter 1

(Author’s Note: Consider Saving You For Once, and Saving Each Other, prequels to this story. This is the main event, and hopefully you enjoy this story. It is a S1 AU, but the differences will come with time.)

****

**_At a private room in Seoul National University Hospital…….._ **

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(Laurel Lance’s POV)  
  


She was here now. As she had been on the ride back to the airport in Jakarta, not particularly looking forward to that whole long flight back home to Starling City, she had gotten a frantic text from her father about how “that Queen punk” had been found on an island in the Yellow Sea and was headed to Seoul to get looked at and checked out before heading back home to America. She couldn’t avoid it now. She had spent five years preparing to be ready for him, to be the person he would need when he returned from his trip. And to know now that he was alive, and waiting for her to come to him, set a warm feeling through her chest. So, she transferred her flight to Seoul. But what to do next, where to go? After all, Seoul wasn’t a small suburb with one hospital. This was a major metropolitan city, one of the jewels of Southeast Asia, and not exactly a place where you could just throw a coin and hit the place where Oliver Queen went.

But she knew she had to find him. For five years, she had been living life without the electricity that love can bring to it. It had been a busy life, sure, where she learned all manner of skills that she would have never had the interest in learning. But it was not a full life, or a happy one. Her heart, the reason she was doing these things and learning these new skills, had been, this whole time, suffering while she was powerless to help him. It did not fill her with joy to know it, more like grief and guilt that she could have been able to help but did not know where to start, or even what to do. But he was back now, alive, and she would warm herself with that memory until she could hold him.

So, in service of that love, she called the only other person she knew of who would be able to understand, who had always understood. Thea. She would have called Moira but she imagined that her phone was almost too hot to hold now, what with all the calls and texts she had to have been getting congratulating her on her son’s return to life. With the knowledge of where he was, she went to go and greet her love.

All she hoped was that, when he saw her, he would remember the promises they made to each other.

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Laurel. That name had been beating in his heart, and echoing in his ears, for five years now. Everything he had done, every shot Yao Fei and Shado had taught him to make with a bow, was in the service of getting back to her. It had been the same way with Slade, where he was drilled on the proper usage of a katana and on the basics of kung fu and taekwondo until the former ASIS operative was at least confident Oliver wouldn’t get killed. The whole time, in a place in his mind where the brutality he was having to do could not be touched, he was thinking about Laurel and getting back to her. For five years, he had been taught how to fight, how to survive. And now, he could be back with his love.

What about the other thing, though? As his father had demanded with his deathbed utterance, Oliver would save his city, and love it as Robert had loved his family. Doing that was a question he would need to find an answer to, and do it quickly. Ignoring a promise like that, disregarding the vow he had made, would be a betrayal of the man that island had turned him into. He would not, COULD not, allow himself to become that man. But could he bring Laurel along for the ride?

Laurel had always been his light, the thing he locked on to when everything felt almost entirely too painful to bear. It would be better if she was alongside him, making sure he didn’t lose himself.

And then he saw her.

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Then she saw him. She noticed the way he was looking at her, impressed in equal measure and wondering if it was still her. She understood that. Many mornings she had looked at herself in the mirror and took a minute to ascertain that this new body was actually HERS. Sure, she wasn’t overly massive. But you could see her abs through her clothes now, and the way Oliver gawked at her legs and hips in her moderately-tight skirt indicated he liked the changes too.

But none of that mattered. She could tell that it was her Ollie, and he was still hiding something. Knowing that a public hospital staffed by guards, and probably by more than a few well-hidden spies from the South Korean National Intelligence Service, was perhaps not the right place to have this conversation out, she nonetheless reached out her hand and lifted her love up.

“On the plane back home?” She said, glancing at him for a second to make sure the subtext of the question she was asking got through.

“Maybe with some Korean barbecue?” Oliver smiled, and Laurel nodded. If she was going to be his partner, like the man made of lightning said she needed to become, any secrets he had would be hers too.

“Ollie, I haven’t seen you for 5 years. We’ll get all the Korean barbecue that you want” Laurel said, smiling as they held hands and she winked with an amused smirk.

In a way that made sense to her, he was a shared part of her life. His battles would be hers, and the other way around.

**_In the Queen Consolidated private jet in international airspace…._ **

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

It was the case. He had to tell her what was in the case. Five years of pain and torment on that island, and every ounce of it was distilled in what was inside the case.

“When my father’s boat was shipwrecked, he died by drowning. Before he went under for the last time, he told me that I needed to save the city from what it was choking it, and love it. I promised him I would. I promised him I would love it like I loved you. And for the next 5 years, I learned all the skills I needed to keep up that promise. I can’t do this without you, and to be honest, I don’t want to” he says, trying to keep tears and hope out of his voice as he knows he can only really do this once.

Opening the case he had been given in his last year, still managing to hide its contents from Laurel, he saw it. He was never quite sure how to feel about this bow, used as it had been so many times to ensure that he could survive through the night by killing a pig or defending his life from whatever group of terrorists or mercenaries showed up to do him harm. There was a lot of blood shed by using this bow, but none of the people who had their lives shortened or ended by it were innocents. That would be the case when he returned home too. This bow, and the arrows that came with it, would only be aimed at those who had shown by their words and deeds that they were the cause of his city’s problems.

But to bring the love of his life in on this, to make her share his responsibilities and solemn mission? That was still something he was unsure about. The question of it, of knowing that she would be going on a task as difficult as this one would be, was not something he particularly relished finding the answer to.

But also, he could not live with himself if he didn’t ask. To not know if the love of his life, the one person who could understand what he was doing and why it is he must do it, would support him on this quest is not something he could ever do.

So, with hope in his heart, he asks.

“In this case are the tools I was given to fulfill that promise. If I must, I will go it alone. But I dream of nothing more, wish for nothing more, than to have you alongside me as a partner and an equal while I do it. Are you interested in joining me?”

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Well, here it was. Here was the question. The man made of lightning had told her that everything she had gone through at Lady Shiva’s compound would make it so that she could become the person Oliver needed her to be. It hadn’t made any sense for any day of those 5 years, but it did now. It absolutely did now.

She had trained, for five slow and painful years, to give an answer to this question. She had turned herself into a martial artist in order to make sure she could credibly give what she knew was the only right answer.

“Yes, Ollie, I will join you. Our city needs saving. Our city needs love, and hope, and strength to get it through its dark times and back to what it’s supposed to be. And until our last breath, we will be on each other’s side to make sure that happens.”

Smiling contentedly, Laurel moves to cuddle up with Oliver Queen. Things couldn’t get much better than this.

**_Meanwhile, at the Merlyn Global Headquarters in Starling City…._ **

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(Malcolm Merlyn’s POV)

It had been a long day, most of it spent dealing with idiots who couldn’t understand why he was pulling his low-reward investments out of the Glades. But now, as night fell, he had another job to do. Some members of the city had begun to voice their interest in job programs, and re-building the Glades with robust social investment.

This could not do, so tonight they would be visited by someone who would ensure that they would realize the error of their ways. It would, in fact, be the last thing they realized.

Grabbing his black leather armor, custom-made double-bladed sword, and compound bow, Malcolm Merlyn looked at himself in the mirror and realized what he needed to be. Precisely. His city needed to be cleansed, removed of filth. And there was no better place to start than the Glades. And anyone who got in his way, or desired another choice, would be greeted by someone who would make sure they never spoke another word of their heresy.

But, as Malcolm was only all too happy to admit, it would not always be him. Because, at this moment, his daughter Kate walked in to the room. Kate had been invaluable in his goals, training alongside him and using her charm and focus to ensure that his plans went off without a hitch.

“5 tonight. 3 for the Dark Archer, 2 for the Phantom” Malcolm Merlyn said, smiling as he finished gearing up.

“2 for me? Have you lost faith in me, father?” jokes Kate Kane-Merlyn, grabbing her own longbow, twin daggers, and poison flechettes.

“Nothing of the sort. You have school tomorrow” says Malcolm, smiling.

They were going to cleanse the filth from their city, and they would do it as a family. Things couldn’t get much better than this.


	2. Take Me To The River

**_At Starling City International Airport…._ **

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(Laurel Lance’s POV)

There would be media here. That was expected. Because, while Oliver Queen had been an anonymous D-list celebrity to the fine people of South Korea, that was universally NOT the case in Starling City. Here, Oliver Jonas Queen was the rebellious king-in-waiting. Every decision he made, every choice to be someone who traded on his fame, was covered breathlessly as though he was the next up to lead a monarchy. And in some ways, he was.

But in every way that mattered, he wasn’t that person anymore. Five years on a deserted island, fighting to survive every day of those five years, did a tremendous job of bleeding off the parts of him that were selfish, arrogant, and driven only by drink and drugs. The Oliver Queen the media saw now, Laurel knew, was the man she had always known he could be. Honorable, to his very soul, and caring for those who were far less fortunate than he. But to these vultures, none of that mattered. All they saw, and she supposed all they would ever see when they looked at him, is the guy who closed bars and knocked paparazzi unconscious. It didn’t matter who he was now, all that mattered was what he had been.

And then, in the moment, she saw the brilliance of the plan. The only people that would know, COULD know, of the man he truly was would be them, and any allies they would bring in as they needed. To the rest of the world, he would simply be a slightly more mature version of Oliver Queen.

For her part, she had to look like she had always been. Sure, there was more of her now. She had not spent five years training under masters of gymnastics, weight training, and martial arts to come back to her home still looking the part of the ingenue as she had. She fought as a lioness, and moved as a woman.

But in her soul, beneath everything else, she was still her, just… better. Five years in that convent in Indonesia had changed her, as Oliver’s five years had changed him. They were what their city, and their world, needed now.

Walking to the limo Oliver had requested, she could feel herself finally being reborn. Now to see the rest of Oliver’s family. This ought to be interesting.

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

He knew that these people were for him, intellectually. But he could not remember the person that they were looking for. To him, that was a ghost, a figment of his past life. Five years on a deserted island in the Yellow Sea, far away from civilization where he learned everything from field medicine and classic Chinese and Korean archery techniques to the basics of hapkido, taekwondo, and kung fu, had multiple side effects. One of them, and the one that was perhaps the most relevant to his situation now, was that the party boy with no sense of responsibility, no real goals beyond getting drunk, was gone forever. But he had learned the value of deception in those five years away, the idea being beaten into his head by Slade first, and then by so many others after. There were things it was better to not let the world know.

And the thing, the one thing, he wished that he could scream from the rooftops is the one thing that the old Oliver Queen would never have done. He loved Laurel with his whole heart, he knew that now. Five years away from her, from her light and joy for life, had only served to remind him of how much he needed her around. He needed her; in a way he hadn’t known he could need anyone or anything. But he couldn’t say it out loud, in front of all these cameras and people, without people immediately realizing that something was different about him.

He wanted, needed, to bind his life to hers for all eternity. It felt like he was beginning to do that, but he needed more. He needed her to know how he felt about her. It was clear he couldn’t tell the world, not now. Too many questions would come of that, ones that he was in no way at all prepared to answer. But there had to be a way that was better than this.

**_At the Queen Mansion…._ **

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(Moira Queen’s POV)

When she got told Oliver was returning, Moira got the house ready. Sure, she didn’t fully understand why it was that Dinah Laurel Lance was the person who had greeted him at the hospital instead of her. She was his mother, after all, and had suffered just as deeply with her son gone as Laurel had. Thinking about it further, though, she figured that Laurel would want to reconnect with her son, to rebuild the roots of their love. And this she was only all too happy with. Because for as long as Oliver Queen had been capable of attracting women, she had always worried about the types that would fall for his charms. Many of them were professional dilletantes, women with no substance and who she always feared were going to do all they could to bleed her son dry. This was why she had always liked Laurel Lance, and hoped Oliver would find his way back to her.

Moira knew, in her bones and her soul, just how trustworthy Laurel was. There was not a chance that Laurel would be one of those damnable women you saw at those charity balls she attended, who treated the staff terribly and had no prospects or things they did beyond spending their husband’s money. Laurel would always want to do something with her life, prove she had goals and aims that didn’t need the Queen fortune. So if serving that best part of herself, being the person Oliver would always need in his life, meant that she got to see him first she would be ok with that.

But as the limo pulled up, Moira felt joy trickle back into our heart as Raisa got ready. Her boy, the apple of her eye in so many ways, was back. They would prepare for the differences that he would have, and they would do what the Queen family had done for generations: adapt and remain strong. Moira would defend her family, and protect the secrets they had.

That was her job. Her cubs would need to be protected, guided, until they were strong enough to stand up on their own.

**_Inside a limo heading to the Queen Mansion……_ **

\--------------------------------------------------------------

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

He was glad Laurel was coming with him. If he was going to walk back into his old life, and show the people who mattered to him that he was different, he could think of no better person to join him than the person who had been the reason for the change in the first place. Sure, five years on the island had done tons to make him ready for this, but at his core, he knew it was her. Being the man she deserved, someone she could see fit to grow old with, was one of the two main goals that he woke up every day on that place looking to fulfill. And now, back at home, he was going to do what his father needed, and what his soul demanded, with equal intensity.

He could see, in memories that felt almost like a life that had already been lived, what would have happened, what he would have undeniably **_BECOME,_** if there hadn’t been a connection to Laurel. He couldn’t become that person. There was no way, no way at all, that he would allow himself to become that dark avenger who was one step up from a killer.

The city needed a hero with the strength to put the wrong things right, and the love in their heart to remember what was good about it once and could be again. Everyone from the generations of Southeast Asian immigrants who lived in North Starling City, to the people struggling for a better life in the Glades, deserved a chance to have what his family had. If, when his job was done, someone wanted to discuss his legacy he hoped that’s what would it be. Not the people brought to justice, or the conspiracies stopped, but the notion that he had given those who never had a chance at a better life a fair run of things.

And so, as he got out of the limo with his love by his side and headed to his home, he began to make plans. There were people he would need to save, lives worth something above and beyond his own, but he didn’t know where to start.

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

She had been gone for five years, training her body into as close to a perfect weapon as she could, so it was not as though as she had the sort of working knowledge of the city and its criminal underbelly as she would have liked. But as they were driving to the Queen Mansion, she began to think of what her role could be in helping the city. Sure, Ollie would have his list of those who were directly polluting the city, but those were usually financiers and robber barons.

And then it hit her. She’d be there for the little guy; the sort of people Oliver would invariably miss in his responsibilities. It wasn’t that he didn’t care about the city. She knew that wasn’t the case at all. He loved this place, but there was just too much for one person to do all by themselves. He would need help.

As she thought of it further, though, there were other things he would need. If he was really going to save the city, he would need to be a symbol. They both had to become that.

She supposed that they weren’t going to start tonight. They’d have time to prepare.

But before they did that, they’d have to meet the family.

**_Meanwhile, back in the Queen Mansion…._ **

\----------------------------------------------------------

(Moira Queen’s POV)

Even after five years away, on some lush but deserted island in the Yellow Sea, she knew exactly when Oliver was in the room. She always had. Sometimes, like when he was trying to swipe some of Raisa's chocolate chip cookies or he had dropped out of college again, it wasn’t the most positive thing. But now, as he walked through the front door, she couldn’t remember all those negatives. None of them mattered.

Her boy was back. It was genuinely the best day of her life. It didn’t matter what he had gone through on the island, although she’d want to hear about that eventually and talk through what he must have gone through.

She would support him in whatever he chose to do, she knew that now. That was the other side of protecting her children, guarding the family secrets. She owed it to Oliver and Thea to be the concrete at their backs as they made their way in the world.

And so, when Oliver made his way through the door, Moira hugged him with all the love and affection she could muster and whispered in his ear “no matter what you become, I will always love and support you”.

And as her son started for a minute, and then sobbed in her arms, she supposed that was the right thing to have said.

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

She couldn’t know. He hadn’t even started yet. There wasn’t even a headquarters, or any of the other things he knew he needed to not run this as some fly-by-night amateur operation. But to hear, to actually HEAR, that his mother would be ok with him choosing this path was a feeling he didn’t know he could have anymore. With what he had done on the island, the decisions he had been forced to make, he didn’t know if there was any way his family could love him anymore. He knew Laurel had promised to be with him the whole way through, but he thought that’s all he would have.

But as he hugged his mother tightly, watching Raisa finishing up the Black Forest brownies he enjoyed so much, he had a memory of telling her this. He remembered it like he remembered his own name, and the pride in her voice when she told him she knew was a great memory. He’d have to investigate this later, but for right now, those brownies looked too good.

As they decided to move, though, the doorbell rang.

**_Meanwhile, on the Easley Bridge…._ **

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(Tommy Merlyn’s POV)

His brother was back. Five years gone on some island in the Yellow Sea, struggling to survive and without any friends or family to make the hard times more bearable, but now it was ok. Everything was going to be ok. Oliver was back.

He knew what he was before Oliver left, and what he had become now. And, if he was being honest with himself, he had Oliver to thank. Knowing his brother in all ways, and through all things, but blood was gone had made him wake up. That could be him someday, and what would he have to show for it? What would people remember him for, exactly? A few great parties? More than a fair number of supermodels who fawned over him?

He needed more than that. Oliver would have hated it, hated HIM, if all he ever became was just another spoiled socialite. That became his overriding goal, his responsibility, to become a man Oliver could look on from wherever he was and be proud of him.

He thought about asking Malcolm for help with this, but he knew Malcolm was too cold, too interested in his adopted daughter Kate, to really give a damn about anything other than whatever mysterious plans and gambits he might be running.

So, what does one do when one needs a plan? Easy. You ask the smartest person you know.

And that’s what Tommy had done. He had gone to Sara Lance, who had become a chef at a restaurant in University Hill. And over many meals, they hatched a plan.

Tommy had always known where the parties were, and how to make them better. So, he’d go to college for hospitality management. And when that was done, he’d open his own party planning firm.

But those meals had a secondary purpose, one he didn’t even think about. Turns out, Sara’s confidence, and her smirk, drew him in like a spider. Over time, those dinners became less and less about his plans, and more and more about the plans for theirs.

And that, he supposed, was why Sara Lance was in the passenger seat of his sportscar. They were going to tell Moira, someone who was like a 2nd mother to him, and hope that Oliver and Laurel gave them their blessing.

**_Back at the Queen Mansion…._ **

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(Oliver Queen’s POV)

It had been a pleasure to see Tommy, still bright and full of life, and Sara. He knew what he had almost given up, what his libido nearly cost him, and he hoped Tommy never made his mistakes.

In fact, he was about to talk with Tommy about it, to explain how enervating the love of a Lance girl had been for him. But then, on the tv in the kitchen, he saw it. Saw… HIM. And with a glance over to Laurel, he knew she saw it too.

It was Adam Hunt, a name on his father’s list of people polluting the city, warping it into something dark and unrecognizable. And sure, eventually, he would have moved on him. But this? What he was seeing now? THIS was unconscionable, unforgivable.

Adam Hunt pulling up into the parking lot of the Sand Point Country Club in a Lamborghini Murcielago that cost more than some people’s HOMES, while he had long been known to steal the pension money of the Starling City Teacher’s Union, was beyond the pale. That car wasn’t his. He had bought it with money he had stolen from people who could use that money for essentials, for things they actually NEEDED.

But to Adam Hunt, it seemed, none of this particularly mattered. He had his money, and the toys and benefits that came with said money, and everyone else was nothing but ants. A man like this could not be reached by the sort of watered-down justice that the under-funded SCPD was capable of. As he thought of it, though, Oliver put a pin in that. Perhaps, at some point in the future, Queen Consolidated and perhaps even Merlyn Global could work together to make sure the SCPD’s budgets were swelled to the point they could do some actual good. He didn’t want to do this forever.

But if no one could punish Adam Hunt, Oliver and Laurel would step into the vacuum. That was the best part. He didn’t have to do this alone. He had Laurel there, the whole time, just like she said she would be.

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

It had been five years away from Starling City, learning everything she could from Lady Shiva. But she could not lie to herself anymore. She had come back, entered as an equal partner in Oliver’s mission, to deal with people exactly, precisely, like this.

Just by his smirk alone, and by the way he parked the car without even so much as a thank you to the valet, she could tell the kind of person Adam Hunt truly was. Beneath the expensive and hand-tailored suits, and the cocky demeanor, this was a vampire. He was going to pull as much as he could out of Starling City, and give nothing back.

Well, she thought with an anger she would have to tamp down because it would do no good, if there was going to be a vampire it would be their job to hunt him down.

But they needed to be symbols, something beyond Oliver Queen and Laurel Lance.

It’d have to be later for that. Right now, Adam Hunt was flaunting his wealth, flaunting his corruption. And if the police couldn’t stop him, Oliver and Laurel would take the task on themselves.

**_Several Hours Later, at the William F. Devin Building…._ **

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(Oliver Queen’s POV)

The professionalism lacking in this operation was KILLING him. They hadn’t cased the building, figured out how well-trained his sure-to-be high-priced security, or any of it. Knowing they were going to do something like this again, and be better prepared for it this time, was the only thing that was keeping him from screaming so loud that it could be heard in Portland.

Nonetheless, they got ready. Oliver grabbed a compound bow, and a quiver of 24 arrows. He knew he was going to make a quiver that could hold a bigger payload after this, but for right now, this would do just fine. Taking the fatigues that he had been given as a gift from Seo-Hyeon and slipping them on, he felt like someone who could finally be prepared to live up to the requests that his father had for him.

But as he checked his bow, he thought of something. And with a question like this, he couldn’t, SHOULDN’T, rely on non-verbal communication and past history. He absolutely had to know.

“Are we killing them, Laurel?”

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

While she could tell Oliver was deep in thought, THAT was a question she hadn’t considered. This was mainly because she was getting dressed in the black-and-yellow gi Lady Shiva had made her train in for five years, and a kendo mask she had used for much of the same time. She knew how it moved, and she knew that she could do everything she needed to in it. But the question was important. It didn’t deserve a flippant answer. People’s lives weren’t, couldn’t be, flippant things.

“No, Ollie. We’re not. We’re fighting them. We’re hurting them. We’re making the life that they’ve chosen exceedingly expensive. But these are still people from our city, and we know how the people in our lives, the people we love, felt when they thought you were dead. To do that to someone else? That is a cruelty. And above all else, we will not be cruel.”

And with that answered, she began to stretch. There were security guards down there, protecting a true villain. They wouldn’t be killed, but today, they’d learn what happened when they made the choice to take someone’s blood money.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Walking through the front door, Oliver landing a front kick to the chest of the 1st security guard as Laurel hits a tiger knee on one rushing in before Ollie fires an arrow right through the handset of the security desk’s phone, they slowly work their way through the building taking out rows of security at a time, Oliver stopping in the IT department to grab an uplink cable and a two-way router to a simple raised eyebrow from Laurel.

Finally making their way up to the penthouse, Oliver and Laurel look around, notice there’s no one there, and Oliver plugs in the router into Adam Hunt’s computer and then slowly begins the process of doing what he came to do, namely taking the blood money of Adam Hunt and returning it to those who could actually use it. Then, with a nod, he made a pair of phone calls.

The first was to ICE, and more specifically their money laundering division, to make an anonymous tip about what Adam Hunt had been doing. The second? That was a whole different kettle of fish.

**_A few hours later outside the William F. Devin Building….._ **

**_\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------_ **

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

As news trucks from CNN, News 52, and more than a few local reporters show up outside the William F. Devin federal building, Oliver Queen and Laurel Lance were the ones waiting for them. Although, as he thought of it, he really wasn’t. Rather, for what he needed to be, they had to be a symbol. Rolling an arrow in his hand while thinking, it came to him. For that matter, so did the speech. Nodding his head, he whispered to Laurel in surprisingly good Chinese as to what their names were going to be, and what he was doing. Getting a head-nod back, he began.

“In this building behind me, Adam Hunt preyed on this city. He used his money, and the resources and power that it gave him, to destroy our home a little bit at a time. Tonight, the two people standing in front of you stopped him. And as long as there will be people who seek to destroy what our grandfathers and grandmothers helped build, we will be here to restore the city’s memory and its reputation.

We are no fools. This will not be a one-week job. There will be those who will seek to tell you that what the city was once, it can never be again. We disagree. The government of this city, the men and women whose job it is to protect you, forgot what that job is. Until they can remember, we will step in.”

As Ollie finished, Laurel stepped in. She had been thinking about their names and came up with something simple.

“But it is not simply the men in their ivory towers who must worry. If you are running drugs in our city, or trafficking women desperate for a better life, we will find you. We will bring you to justice. If your child is missing, and you have nowhere else to turn, call us. We will move heaven and earth to find them. If you are in need of help, and the police are too overworked and underfunded, call us. We will investigate. And if you choose to run from us, choose to try and corrupt the levers of justice, you will soon discover that we, the Green Arrow and the Black Canary, are not now, and will not ever be, justice you can run from.”

**_Meanwhile, at Malcolm Merlyn’s mansion…._ **

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(Malcolm Merlyn’s POV)

**CHILDREN.**

That’s who was on his tv right now. Arrogant children who thought, because they walked through a few security guards, that they were genuinely capable of stopping him and his Undertaking. But if he moved on them now, the defeat wouldn’t mean anything. They wouldn’t have gotten their hopes up, wouldn’t have polished their skills, only to be reminded of a lesson he had learned time and time again: There was always someone better.

So, he would let them pick off members of his cadre who had outlived their usefulness to him. He would let them get their hopes up. Because, when the time came, he knew they could not beat him and Kate. 

And when the city’s last defenders were defeated, he would cleanse the Glades as he planned. His victory would be slow in coming, but it would be comprehensive.

It was past time to baptize the Glades. And this Green Arrow and Black Canary? They would do, COULD do, nothing about it.


	3. The Sweet Taste of Professionalism

**_At a small seafood restaurant in Chinatown……_ **

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(Oliver Queen’s POV)

This wasn’t like any of those missions he had been forced to do on the island. Those were brutality writ large, and things he was doing because it had been made abundantly clear what was going to happen to Thea, and to his mom, if he didn’t. Sitting in a crappy noodle bar in Incheon, wolfing down barely-edible ramen while praying to god there was someone there who could rescue him from the sword of Damocles that was hanging over his head, was not how he wanted to be introduced to the joys of Pan-Asian food. At times like that, all he could do to prevent himself from walking into the middle of the street was to think of Laurel. Whatever the man in lightning had wanted him to do, he wanted Laurel to do something similar to make herself ready for what his father wanted them to do together. And now, as they sat together in easy silence, he knew the major purpose of those five years.

To be clear, he didn’t enjoy those missions, didn’t feel adrenaline coursing through his veins hours after he was done, like he enjoyed filling the accounts of innocent people who had been robbed of their pensions through no fault of their own. But what he did remember was how well-planned the missions were. They had infiltration and exfiltration plans, blueprints for the meeting, and weapons and armor areas to make sure they were properly armed.

If he was going to do what he had sworn to be, there would be, could be, no more amateur-hour shenanigans of the sort that had taken place earlier tonight. They would need specific help, and it would be them together who would work together in the looking for it.

Their city needed heroes, people who would do what needed to be done without searching for credit. But just as much, their city deserved those heroes to be prepared, and to take the task seriously.

To not do that, to simply put the training and skill development that they would need back-of-mind, would be an insult to the mission. An insult to his father, and to the promises they made to each other. That could not stand.

**_Meanwhile, at Wildcat Muay Thai Gym in the Glades……_ **

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(Ted Grant’s POV)

He couldn’t believe what he had seen. He could remember, from the days of the 70’s and the 80’s, when he had gone out into his city and fought as this Green Arrow and Black Canary were vowing to fight. But he had learned a hard lesson in doing it, and this was a thing he hoped he would never have to see these two new heroes being forced to learn.

He had discovered, inches at a time, that one could not be both a world-class Muay Thai fighter, a vigilante, and a husband without one of them suffering. And when it became clear to him that his relationship with his wife and kids was the thing that was beginning to bow under the weight of his trinity of lives, he chose to give up being a vigilante and a fighter and just teach instead. And because Starling City was close enough to Southeast and East Asia that flights here weren’t cost or time-prohibitive, he soon became masters-level in the various close cousins of Muay Thai.

Even with all that he had learned, and all the knowledge that he had been given, it had never been quite enough to sit by and watch as his city sank deeper and deeper into despair. But he could not pick up his metal twin hooks, and use his knowledge, any more. He had, after all, sworn an oath to his wife and to his kids. For as much as he knew he should help, the notion of breaking an oath to ANYONE was not something that he could abide.

But, he supposed, perhaps it was time to issue a reminder to those who remembered what he had been, and make an offer of help to those who were picking up his mantle.

**_The next morning at the main conference room in the Queen Mansion……_ **

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(Laurel Lance’s POV)

There were things about her old life that Laurel Lance was never going to give up. For one, as soon as she got herself settled, she was going to work at CNRI so she could have another avenue to find out who was harming her city on a much more street-level way than the business tycoons and traffickers Oliver was going to be going after on his father’s list. Secondly, and this was a touch more germane to the situation that she found herself in, she had always been a master of research. She remembered being commended for it by her law professors, and again when she was an intern at CNRI.

And right now, as she was finding and printing out what she thought they might need, she was really enjoying the notion that her gift for research would serve her new mission well. But, in the same breath, oh god was this a lot. They needed a base, a logistics man and an armorer, a doctor or someone with higher-level experience in medicine, and sparring partners.

And if she was triaging this whole, thing it would be the last part that was the most important. Laurel knew that, without someone to keep her training up to par, the job would be such that she might get lazy. After all, it was not like the random thugs on the streets of Starling City were ever going to suddenly have multiple black belts. But down that road lay impending disaster, and she could see it. She could remember now, even, the notion of hearing about a defeat Oliver suffered because he had not trained properly. Maybe it was another one of those memories she had been having ever since the man of lightning had come into to their lives, that almost felt like a life previously lived. That would not happen when they were together. They would keep each other sharp, and be the whetstones and honing rods the other needed.

She also knew, in her bones, that physically sparring with Oliver was precisely the wrong thing to be doing. This was for two reasons: Firstly, if Oliver ever lost control of himself when he was tired and split her lip or bloodied her nose, he’d have an entire SWAT team at his front door led by her father. That could not do, and besides, their routine date nights at the places in the city that the rot had not yet touched would be colored by that. People would embarrass Ollie, bully him, demand to know why she was with someone who would hurt her. That could not be.

Secondly, they needed different things. Oliver needed to complete his lessons, to get to a place where he was a genuine master. That would require a teacher who could fix his flaws, teach him new forms, and give him a style that he could work with. Laurel knew that it had been five years for her of just training, sharpening up her skills one day at a time, but that it had not been that way for Oliver. It would be impossible, and blatantly unfair, for her to expect that he had the peace of mind, and time, to truly train in one style when survival was front of mind. Now, though, he could.

What she needed was a whole different kettle of fish. She needed someone who could push her, could find her flaws and make sure she was routinely pushed to her limits.

So, back to the question. How to find all these things they needed. It would not be answered quickly, but she knew of plenty of abandoned buildings in the city. It was time to be serious.

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Even now, when they were just working on the finer points of their plan in relative silence, he felt like the most loved person in the entire world. It had been a painful five years, with more loss and bloodshed than he had ever imagined himself being capable of surviving, but here he now was. He had gone through all of that, and the one person who gave his life actual meaning, was here with him.

He would not, **COULD** not, let her down. She had made the point that they would be their city’s rescuers, the people who would bring it out from the darkness and the rot that had enveloped it for so long, and so he would be. Sure, his father’s list would be his guiding light for some of it but there would always be those who lived in the shadows, and had done a masterful job of making sure that no one knew they existed. Well, with his bow and with Laurel’s fighting skills, it was time to make sure everyone knew the time for feasting on the riches of Starling City were over and done with.

But where to start? They couldn’t do what they had done to bring Adam Hunt to justice. Last that he remembered hearing, ICE and the Secret Service were having a tremendous amount of fun seeing how many different variations of money laundering, and counterfeiting, they could put on him. But doing that, going in full blitzkrieg style, that had to be a one-off thing.

These missions, the people that they were making sure saw real, uncorrupted justice, had to be done the right way. And then, he saw the way to do it. 

“Laurel? What do you think about joining me in running a nightclub?”


	4. The First: Wildcat

**_At the dining room of the Queen Mansion…._ **

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(Moira Queen’s POV)

Watching them together, speaking in whispered giggles and taking fast notes on a legal notepad, she suddenly got flashbacks to her and Robert at Stanford. Sitting in the libraries, planning for what they’d do once Robert took over the family business, and drinking multiple pitchers of coffee. At times like this, she could see her husband in front of her.

It was something she’d never get over, she guessed, but seeing her son become the man they had both wished he would become one day made the pain a little duller. If he could see Oliver now, see how disciplined and honorable he was, she just knew he’d be proud of him.

And with this Green Arrow and Black Canary running around, vowing to save the city, she knew the man Oliver had become would be needed to stand as a bulwark against their plans. She could just tell, even with their faces hidden in shadow, that the city’s latest attempts at heroes were children, immature and unschooled in the way the world WORKED. But if they could somehow be able to inspire the city to notice the rot, this could be a real problem. One that she could not, for the safety of her family and the empire that she had helped to build, allow to continue.

It wasn’t so much that she didn’t notice the inequality. Driving through the Glades reminded her, sometimes in ways that sent a weird twinge through her chest, of what her own childhood was like growing up in Coast City in the 60’s and 70’s when the federal government infamously refused to allow the city fathers to ask for any more grants. And yet, here she stood. She had been able to overcome the blight and the poverty of her circumstances.

Did it seem so utterly impossible for these people in the Glades to show the same resolve, the same grit, that she had? Or were things too far gone?

She supposed, for the first time, she owed it to Oliver, and to Robert’s memory, to find out.

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

This was what he had missed the most. Sure, their whispered conversations were now about finding wing chun dummies and proper kickpad manufacturers who would ship in bulk and not ask any questions as opposed to banal highschool gossip, but it was still nice to have a partner who understood him and what he needed. He had spent five years being forced to work with people who used him as a tool, as a distraction, and as an emotional dumpster.

To know that, after all of that suffering and pain, he still got the chance to live out his dreams with the love of his life was a joy that he could never truly live without. But, and this he weighed in equal measure with his joy, he also knew they had a responsibility now. There were things that they promised to do, people they had promised to become, and there was no way that he could do what they needed to do without paying proper tribute to that responsibility.

So, as they took a break for breakfast, Oliver got to thinking. He knew his skills lay in archery. One did not train under the masters he had and not feel like he could shoot a bow with the true legends of the form. But carrying a bow, and that being the only way he did things, felt sort of like he wasn’t being the best he could be. He wasn’t honoring his sacrifice, and the sacrifice of all those who taught him.

He hadn’t really devoted all, or nearly as much time as he ought to have, of his time studying martial arts. If he was being honest with himself, he was behind Laurel as a pure fighter, and he didn’t want to be behind her on anything. He wanted to be right alongside her, as an equal partner.

So that meant he needed to find someone who could train him to a place where no one would look at him, and not see a threat with both his fighting skill and a bow.

But what did he want to learn? What spoke to him?

It had been his time in South Korea, in Incheon and Seoul, that had been both the most painful part of his five years away and the most illuminating. In between missions he would go to the dojangs, and study what he could.

To honor the people he had lost there, the people he had grown to consider family, he could think of no better thing than to study those arts, and master them. But where to go to learn those skills? Starling City was not a fertile ground for martial arts schools, unlike Incheon and Seoul where it seemed that you could not throw a coin down the street without hitting 10 separate dojangs. But to be what he needed to be, what Laurel deserved from him, he needed to find a way to be the solid steel at her back.

**_Meanwhile, at the News 52 Studios…._ **

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At most news stations, you have a variety of ways for information to get to people who need it. The internet is top-notch, as is the wireless and wired phone service, but it is very rare to do what Theodore Jose Luis Grant did. Namely, when he wanted to get a message to someone that it would be strange for him to attempt to contact in normal life, he simply walked in the front door of the news station, asked to speak to a reporter, and left a note.

Simple. Job done. Now to see what the city’s newest saviors would do with the information.

**_Later that night, at the Queen Mansion…._ **

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(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Even though they hadn’t really built out a whole base, Oliver had said that he had wanted some stuff to keep in shape while he was home. So, Moira had spared no expense in putting together a treadmill and a power rack in one wing of the house.

Laurel liked exercising, in a way she hadn’t before the man made of lightning had showed up and lit the torch on her true potential. But more than just the miles on the treadmill, or the endless work with a barbell, it was that she could feel connected to Ollie when she trained. Both of them had gone through 5 years away from each other, and been forced to answer questions about themselves that they didn’t even believe they were even going to have to be asked. And while 5 years spent doing martial arts with the best teachers three times a day was nothing like what Oliver had gone through in South Korea, especially on that island called Yeon-Og, it did feel like they could share that in common. Knowing that was common, that they would be bonded by more than love, was a thrill that she would never get tired of.

Sitting down next to Ollie, watching the news, they were stunned to realize that Wildcat, a vigilante from Moira and Quentin’s era, had demanded a personal sit-down with the Green Arrow and the Black Canary. She knew that they couldn’t react, of course. Even as inexperienced as they were in the trade that they had now chosen, she fully realized that acting how they were feeling inside would make it so that the penny dropped around their families, and their friends. For a variety of reasons, both pragmatic and personal, that could not happen.

Despite that, Wildcat’s offer was sticking in the back of her mind. If it was real, and not just an elaborate set-up, this could be what they needed. Wildcat, whoever was under the hood, had to have connections they could have only dreamt of.

This could be the way in, the way to become the sort of heroes the city deserved.

**_The next morning at Starling City Ironworks…._ **

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(Oliver Queen’s POV)

This was going to be too easy for whoever this Wildcat character was to figure out. But none of that mattered. He had a responsibility, a solemn task, and it seemed that Wildcat understood that, and shared it.

For 5 years, he had spent more time than he would have liked getting used to the notion that there would be people who he thought would have his best interests at heart, only to be forced to discover that they were lying. It had been a painful lesson, but one that was vital to ensuring he would be precisely the person that he needed to become.

If he was being honest, he knew he could handle more betrayal. It was a part of the life he had chosen; part of the man his father’s deathbed request had made him into. But he did not, COULD not, countenance Laurel going through it. He needed her strength, her light and her hope in the better angels, to make what he was doing possible.

So, as he walked in to the ironworks with Laurel at his side, he hoped his internal lie detector was working. He had his bow, and the quiver and arrows he had been given on the island. However, if fighting his way out suddenly became a necessity, he got the sense that the 24 arrows he had on him might not do the job.

He hoped it wouldn’t come to that. But, as he had taught himself repeatedly, better to be prepared than not.

And then, he heard it.

First, it was the sound of a man, about a 210-pound man if he had to guess, stomping out of the shadows of the ironworks.

Then, it was the scratch of what sounded like steel claws on the side of a wall. If this Wildcat figure was looking to intimidate, to remind them who the alpha male of Starling City’s vigilante firmament might have been, this would have worked.

Except, Oliver had his ability to feel fear over such small things burned off, one year of hell at a time. To scare him, to make him see things that weren’t there, you’d have to do a hell lot more than whatever this parlor trick was.

And then, the Wildcat stepped out of the shadows and it was Oliver and Laurel who felt their jaws drop.

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

This could not be happening. Wildcat could not be this person.

But so, he was.

“Uncle Ted?”


	5. The First And One-Half: Ben Turner

**_At the Starling City Ironworks…._ **

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(Laurel Lance’s POV)

She knew, objectively, she had just blown it. There was no way her secret was hers alone, anymore. But, as she thought about it further, what did that mean for Uncle Ted, her mother, and her father? If Uncle Ted had been Wildcat, and all evidence in front of her pointed to the fact that he was, did her mother know? Had that been where they met? All at once, even without trying too hard, a ton of new questions had entered her mind.

But the biggest one, the one that had been the reason she had come to this place, remained unanswered. Was Wildcat going to help them?

(Ted Grant’s POV)

Of all the goddamned people. Why couldn’t it have been someone he didn’t know, hadn’t watched grown up, who walked in here wearing that gi? Because if it had been that, if it had been anyone other than her, he would have had a proper decision to make. Thinking of whether staking his name and what remained of his reputation on two inexperienced heroes was worth the trouble of giving them the guidance to fulfill their potentials would have been a real problem.

But now? Now, because it was his favorite niece, the chance to make the decision had been taken away from him. What kind of person would he be if he didn’t help when she needed it?

Besides, from what he could tell, they needed a lot of help. And, even though he had been out of the game for decades, he could help them in the ways they needed. He had become, by accident or by choice, sort of a vigilante general store.

Well, he guessed, it was time to get down to business.

“Tomorrow morning, at my school. We’ll talk about what you need.”

**_The next morning at Wildcat Muay Thai Gym……_ **

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(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Ever since he had been forced to wash himself up on that island in the Yellow Sea, and spend five years fighting for his life, Oliver Queen had been training himself to fight and survive. But none of his teachings had held even the slightest hint of formality. One could not expect to have proper belt ceremonies, or spend weeks on the proper way to do the forms, when your life was on the line. There simply wasn’t time. As a result of that, his “style” if you could call it that was a mélange of basic survival tactics, some military-influenced defensive tactics, and the bare minimum of instruction in Taekwondo, Hapkido, and Tang Soo Do that he could have. He had never been in a formal school, a place where he could just release himself in the freedom of learning something without having to place survival at the forefront of his mind.

So to walk into a place like this, even one where things feel a tad bit past their respective prime, is still a heady experience for him. All these things he could use to be the unarmed combatant that his city needed were right here. He had sworn a contract with his city to fight for them until he could fight no longer, and this would be the place where he could begin to make sure he lived up to that responsibility.

But where to begin? All around him were the tools for someone who taught others how to fight. Speed bags, cobra bags, and double-end bags to practice head movement and had and foot speed. Heavy bags and striking dummies for throwing kicks and practicing one’s offense. Hell, this place even had agility ladders and an ice bath off in the corner. If he knew what it was that his style was going to be, he was utterly sure that he could learn what he needed to here.

And then, it hit him. Up until now, that “jack of all trades” philosophy he had forced himself to rely on was about survival, nothing more. Not thriving, not getting any better at a specific skill, but just about making it through to the next day. He had been incomprehensibly lucky.

Knowing that, realizing it to be true, chilled him to his bones. He needed to forget everything he knew, and be taught from the beginning. But how to do that and still save his city?

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

It had been years since she had been here, as a little girl, but she still remembered the way her Uncle Ted glowered at her when she had wandered too close to one of the rings. She hoped, and told her mother and father when she got home, that she would never have done anything so wrong again to have Uncle Ted mad at her like that again.

At this moment, 2 decades after it happened, she suddenly realized that she had not done as good a job as she might have hoped of insuring that she pulled that gambit off. Because, for all she had learned from Lady Shiva and Ricardo Diaz and how much like an adult she felt, at this precise moment she was all of 8 years old again, getting kindly but firmly disciplined.

Except, and this was the weird part, Uncle Ted wasn’t saying a single word. All he was doing was glaring at her, like someone who had seen their dog urinate on the carpet but was so utterly angry that words failed them.

Finally, he spoke. And somehow, Laurel realized, that was worse. Because Uncle Ted wasn’t just mad, he was disappointed.

“What about the life I used to lead compelled you to join me in it? Do you know what I had to give up, the choices I had to make? Because those choices will be the ones you have to make someday. I know you’ve sworn an oath to defend this city, but what happens if you and Oliver Queen out there decide to have a family? What will your oaths mean to you then? If you had been anyone else, Laurel, I would have agonized over this decision for days. I would have wanted to know if you were serious, if this was a thing you **WANTED** to do or that you **NEEDED** to do.

It would have been a choice that took me some time. But because my favorite niece is the Black Canary, you took that choice from me.

I wish, with all my heart and soul, that this city was in a place where you did not have to get your hands dirty to make justice. But it isn’t, and it hasn’t been for a while. So, if someone doesn’t do it, it won’t get done. I wish it wasn’t you. Believe me, if there were somebody else to do it, I'd let them do it, but there's not. So, all three of us, we're doing it” said Ted, and at that moment, Laurel felt like things were going ok.

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

As Laurel and Ted were having a conversation in his private office, Oliver sat on a chair and did some real thinking. It was time, had been for a while, to contemplate the kind of fighter he wanted to be and go about the business of either hiring, or signing up for private lessons, the exact kind of people who could help get him there.

Oliver was never ashamed of his money. He knew what he could do with it, and what it could do for the city. He could fund reformers, bribe judges to call cases on the merits of the law, and generally out-fund the city’s corrosive influences.

And right now, no one would be all that stunned to imagine him hiring private teachers to teach him the finer points of particular styles. He didn’t hold much interest in learning something specific. But he knew he needed something a little bit less showy, and a lot more brutal, and that’s where he was stuck. But no matter. Soon, the idea would come to him. And when it did, the people who were doing the most harm to his city would regret that he had learned the lesson.

He was an archer first, foremost, and always. He had been taught in the Korean, Chinese, and Japanese ways until drawing an arrow and hitting his target every time was as routine as breathing. But to be better, to be the thing his city demanded of him, he needed to become just as good with his hands as he was with a bow. Laurel needed him too. More than anything, he wanted to be her partner. He wanted to be equals. 

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

After being yelled at by her uncle, there were few things that she could find herself less interested in than sparring. But as she thought it through, she realized she needed it. She was, after all, one more dan away from getting to a master status in Taekwondo, and had been a black belt in Wing Chun, Dragon-style Kung Fu, and Karate. This meant that it was very difficult for her to find the kind of sparring that she needed. Simply rolling up to a McDojo and asking around for a fair contest would not do the job. To keep herself as sharp as she needed, she would need high-quality sparring. And one thing she could say, no matter how mad she was at him now, was that Uncle Ted could always find people to push her to her limits.

So, to be walked into a ring whose mat was tinged crimson with blood, and looked nothing like the clean mats she had trained on in Indonesia, she felt like she was back within herself. It felt odd to think of this now, considering what her life had been five years ago, but she enjoyed sparring, training, and fighting. It had been awoken in her while she was training in Indonesia, and now she knew she could never live without it. And if Uncle Ted needed to see her move, needed to see what she had been taught, to believe in her that would be ok. But this could not be done, WOULD not be done, dishonorably.

Even though they were family, honor and rules still applied. So, before she showed her uncle her skills, she bowed to him as an aspiring master would to someone who had already showed supreme skills. And then, the sparring began.

(Ted Grant’s POV)

His niece was really good. There were hints, memories on the wind, of seeing this fighting style before during his travels but whatever it was, Laurel had mastered what she was throwing at him. But, as he blocked and parried away her blows, he was seeing holes in her game, holes people with guns would only be all too happy to exploit. For one, she was throwing more punches than kicks. Laurel was taller than the average woman, and longer-limbed, so getting in close enough to eliminate that advantage seemed like a rather strange stylistic choice.

Also, and he hoped this was just because she was sparring and not throwing all-out, but it didn’t seem like she was using all of her power. He hoped that when she went out into the field she wasn’t as reluctant to let everything go as she was now.

Eventually, though, she stopped and they again bowed to each other. He had come to a decision.

“I do not relish this. I wish there was another way. But because there is not, I will help you. I will help you, Laurel, keep your skills sharp and improve you where I can. And as for you, Mr. Queen, I will teach you all I know. But I think you need a dedicated trainer, and so I will be calling a friend. If you are to be our city’s new guardians, I will help. I just will never, _CAN_ never, fight alongside you.”

And with that, he offered his hand and both Laurel and Oliver took it. A promise had been made.

**_Meanwhile, in Coast City….._ **

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A phone was ringing. It was answered with a formless grunt.

“Grant? What do you want after all this time? A new student? I’ll be there soon.”

And so, Ben “Bronze Tiger” Turner got up out of bed, and got dressed. If Ted Grant was calling him, this was a serious matter. And he was a serious man.


	6. The Second: Ben Turner

**_At the Starling City International Airport……_ **

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(Ben Turner’s POV)

It was only for Ted Grant that he was doing this. Anyone else who would have called him and demanded this favor would not have found the response to be anything that they would have personally relished. He had gotten out of the life of training vigilantes, of making sure that those who had the will to see their world changed for the better had the skill to back it up, when that whole business with Richard Dragon happened. Richard Dragon hadn’t blamed him, he really hadn’t. But he felt the anger, the anger he had fought to control since he was a kid, bubble up in him and that terrified him. So, not knowing what else to do, he kept his taekwondo school open, and focused on training Olympians. The Bronze Tiger was dead, and he was happy with that.

And then Ted Grant called him. Wildcat has always seen the best in him, he thought, and they had been in enough sparring sessions, tournament blocks, and Muay Thai cards as partners and occasional opponents that they would have seen the worst of each other. And yet, they still trusted each other. So, when Ted Grant said he had a student for him, someone who wanted to be what Ted had been once upon a time, a voice awoke in Ben Turner’s head. A voice he thought he had long banished to the darkest corners of his mind. Even now, he noticed how it sounded like his dad.

“You can help people, Benjamin. I don’t understand that martial arts you do, but if it works for you, you need to use it.”

But here? Someone wanted to save **_THIS_** place, this hollowed-out husk of a city?

Well, he thought, he had gone on longer, and more Sisyphean, quests than this. And if Ted Grant was asking him to do it, Ted knew it could get done.

He could remember, because his father had been stationed here in the Navy, when this was a port city. Aircraft manufacturing and the shipping industry kept this place afloat for generations, but then Ferris Air moved to Coast City and it all went to crap. Now, unless you had a master’s degree, you were working low-wage jobs trying to keep your head above water.

But it wasn’t just the economy choking on its own bloat that worried him and made him realize why Ted tried to save things and why he needed him to help now. The police were uncommonly, almost cartoonishly, corrupt and under-resourced. How could a place with so much to offer, in both natural and technological resources, be THIS broken?

That, he supposed, would be a question they would answer.

**_Meanwhile, at Wildcat Muay Thai Gym in the Glades…._ **

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(Ted Grant’s POV)

From the moment he had agreed to help train Oliver and Laurel, he ended up having to buy a whole new bunch of equipment. Some of it was just upgrades of the stuff he already had, but he had an Olympic-level archery training setup in his basement. Normally, he would have rolled his eyes at this and demanded the Green Arrow do his training somewhere else. But then, Oliver Queen glanced at him and hit 3 bullseyes in a row while never taking his eyes off of Ted Grant and he saw the point. If you were going to be an archer of **_THAT_** quality, you needed a place to train. Twisting it into the language of muay thai, he could see it better now. Much like he needed live sparring, he supposed that if you were an archer you needed live feedback, a chance to see and correct your mistakes. And if Oliver, and Laurel, were going to do what the city expected of them this would be the place where they would learn without fear of being judged. He wanted to be useful for them in that way. Being a good role model, and mentor, was something he never worried about being.

What he did worry about, and this kept him up at night even though he wasn’t about to admit it, was the idea that there were people like this Adam Hunt throughout his city and he hadn’t known about it. Sure, he had taken pride in being a street-level hero but this? This was worse. How did he miss this?

And then, just as quickly, he saw it. People like that, people who were doing what Adam Hunt and his ilk were doing, would have made utterly and absolutely sure that a guy like him never saw them. They would cover their tracks, and have their lieutenants be middle-managers instead of street-level enforcers, so that the notion that they would cross his path just would not be plausible.

But, he very much realized, the Green Arrow and the Black Canary were looking to put a boot in the chest, and an arrow in the foot, of all the people who were **REALLY** polluting his city.

And, even from his role in the shadows, he didn’t mind seeing that happen.

(Ben Turner’s POV)

As he paid his fare with a local yellow cab to drop him off, Benjamin Marcus Turner walked inside the Wildcat Muay Thai gym and felt at home in a way he didn’t think he could feel anymore.

Fighting dojos, whether they be taekwondo dojangs or regular boxing gyms, always have a certain smell to them. To Ben’s way of thinking, it wasn’t a real gym unless it didn’t smell like people got into fights on a regular basis. It needed to have something you couldn’t find in commercial gyms anymore, no matter how hard you could look for it: **_character_**.

And here, he would be the trainer for Oliver Queen. He had sort of understood that the kid had a desire to do good, to be an example for the people of his city, but did not feel as though he had the tools to do the task to the best of his abilities.

It was not something new to be in this position, but he got the sense he was going to be living here for a while. From everything Ted Grant could say, this was not going to be a 2-week thing. He was going to be here for a while.

Well, time to unpack.

**_Meanwhile, at the Queen Mansion……_ **

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(Oliver Queen’s POV)

He didn’t want to get out of bed. After five years of sleeping on grass, dirt, and futons, the notion of being in a comfortable California king felt so much like right he didn’t know how to handle it.

Not dwelling on his past was something he held himself tightly to. Going back to those 5 years on that island, and in the cities of Incheon and Pyongyang knowing what he had been forced to do and become, was not something he wanted to do longer than was necessary. But, he knew, if he slept any longer, he’d start dwelling on that past and that wasn’t good for anyone. So, regretfully, he got out of bed.

And as he glanced over, he saw the love of his life Laurel Lance and a happy smile crossed his face at both the seeing of her, and the memory of last night. They had got _re-acquainted_ with each other last night, and the sweet innocent girl he remembered as a teenager is sure gone now. The woman who shared his bed and will continue to share his bed until his final breath, is no longer innocent. She, at least when it comes to urges and skills to satisfy said urges, is a fully-grown and **_fully qualified_** woman.

As he stood there, though, he heard the door yawning open and was faced with a riddle. Either cover Laurel up, hiding her modesty, or cover himself up and avoid answering questions about the island and what it was he had gone through?

That was, in the five years away, no question at all. Laurel was an adult woman, with needs she had done a great job of communicating and satisfying last night, but he didn’t think it right, or appropriate, to make her be forced to answer those questions when she was asleep.

But as he steeled himself, preparing for Thea to ask any questions she could come up with, the door opened, and he saw someone that made him smile.

It was Raisa. Of all the people in the Queen Mansion, other than his mother, no one cared about him and his well-being as much as Raisa did. It was her who was the first one he hugged when he returned home, happy that he could see her. But right now, he was realizing that Raisa would know what he wanted to be to Laurel and could help him do it.

He realized, with a feeling that felt like a warmth in his chest, that he no longer wanted to be just her boyfriend. He wanted to be her partner, her husband, and her protector. Knowing that to be the case, he had to get ready. If the Black Canary needed a partner, needed someone to watch her back and be her hero, he’d have some breakfast and meet Ben Turner at Wildcat Muay Thai gym.

The work starts now. 


	7. A Dark Interlude

**_At the Merlyn Mansion in the Broadmoor section of Starling City 15 years ago…._ **

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Malcolm Merlyn was a man of uncommon power, resources, and savvy. He had, over the course of his life at the top of just about every list of successful businessmen that one might be able to think of, developed a reputation as a brilliant thinker, and had personally redefined the fields of aerospace and defense technology more than once. And yet, to him, precisely none of it mattered.

All the power, all the money, was meaningless because it could not bring back to him the one thing that he craved the most of all: Rebecca, his wife and the mother of his son Thomas. So, he did what he was supposed to, albeit in far more style than the everyday person in his city would have been capable of. Thus, he buried her on his property in a pitch-perfect recreation of the Taj Mahal and tried to move on. Or, perhaps more accurately, that’s what he told the outside world he was doing.

Because, as he had grown to understand, people never looked beneath the surface too often. And in his case, beneath the surface of the grieving husband, there was something else. Because, after Rebecca had been killed, Malcolm left his young child in the care of the help and went out to make sure that what happened to him would never happen to anyone again. It had started small, and humanely, with charitable programs to fund a new PAL center in the Glades, but he could never shake the feeling that there was something endemic in the Glades. Something that was unfixable.

So, when this thought came to him, it made a kind of sense. The Glades would always be a place where violence lived, and the people here would only be reformed by violence. If you want to make someone better, make them understand, you had to speak their language.

So, with the aid of the kind of clarity that comes from soul-crushing grief, Malcolm Merlyn decided that he would become the Rosetta Stone for the Glades. He would translate what they needed to be, what their city and world demanded they become, into a language they would understand.

But, he also realized, he could not do this alone. He would need to be trained, made into someone capable of carrying that skill level and he needed to find someone who would not have the attention of the world’s more skilled investigative bodies. What he was planning on doing, planning on _BECOMING_ , was not the sort of thing that could be easily explained away by talk about taking some meditation and doing pilates. He needed to become a killer, someone who spoke the universal language of violence in as many tongues as he could find.

That meant he’d have to forsake being a good father to Thomas. Honestly, though, knowing that didn’t hurt like he thought it would. It was probably down to the realization that he hadn’t been one for quite a while. But, he thought, that was down to Thomas more than him.

The Merlyn name was a grand one, loaded with prestige and reputation, and absolutely no one cared about it less than his own son. When he got back from being molded into whatever he was going to become, he was going to begin the process of making sure Thomas had his own path. If he didn’t want to be a Merlyn, didn’t want to join his father, he didn’t need his father’s money did he?

And then finally, he found them. Twelve men, deep in the middle of the Singaporean wetlands. All he knew of them was that they were master martial artists, archers, and tactical thinkers. Exactly the thing he needed to become. He supposed, with humor that he was finding harder and harder to create for himself, that it was fitting. Singapore was a country so rife with corruption that Merlyn Global had been dissuaded thoroughly, with great vigor, from setting up their Asian offices there. It stood to reason, then, that if he went there, no one would know who he was.

So, as he packed up his expensive luggage and headed out, he saw the beauty in it. A place riven by corruption was the absolute perfect place to start becoming the thing the Glades needed him to be. And, he realized with a certain predatory glee, the thing he **_WANTED_** to be.

**_Meanwhile in Singapore City…._ **

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(Kate Kane’s POV)

This was all so BORING. Ever since she was old enough to know what her dad did for a living, she hated every second of it. She wanted to make friends, to have a normal life, and to have faith in something.

Because, right now, all she had was this sense that she wanted to be more than just some security chief’s daughter, watching as he protected people who didn’t deserve to be protected. Why did it matter what some poor shopkeeper in the slums thought of the world? All they would ever be, all their kids would ever be, would be poor shopkeepers in the slums. And her father, noble fool that he was, spent time thinking about how to protect them.

Why didn’t he spend time saving the people who mattered? The people whose money kept the city afloat, not the small-time businesses who no one would miss?

So, as her father moved into his morning job as a security coordinator at Changi Airport, she was bored deeply and wanting some excitement. So, with boredom beating through her bloodstream like a drum solo, she did the one thing her father had warned her not to do: She wandered the airport without her security staff. Lord knows, she had heard her father harangue her enough times about doing that exact thing that she knew why it wasn’t a good idea. Even now, as she went to go and get a green tea, she could hear his voice in her head. “What on earth would possess you to leave the people I hired to keep you safe? Don’t you know what it would do to me if you were kidnapped, the favors I’d be willing to call in to return you to me?”

She didn’t care, though. She wanted to feel adrenaline coursing through her veins, and she could think of no better way to do that than to wander through a strange airport.

**_Meanwhile, at the baggage claim……._ **

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(Malcolm Merlyn’s POV)

It had been, he realized, a true benefit to fly to Singapore 1st-class. Thank goodness for having an entire department of people who were skilled at getting him tickets on the highest-quality airlines, and were scared enough of him to not ask any questions about what he needed them for.

And, because he had made sure the computer in his private offices was encryrpted with bleeding-edge tech, no one knew that he had found and memorized a best practices list of all the things new martial artists would need. So, in his luggage, sat everything he’d need to make sure that the Glades would be punished for what they had done, what they had become.

But, as he walked through the airport to his waiting limo, he saw a girl wandering the airport and got the sense that she, just as he was, needed to become something else. Something different.

So, putting on all of the “kindly fatherly figure” charm he had left in him, he made the introduction.

“Hello, my name is Malcolm Merlyn. What’s yours?”

(Kate Kane’s POV)

Malcolm Merlyn! Here! In the Flesh!

In the business magazines her father had been only too happy to get here, he was like a god. And now, here he was. It was almost too much for him to handle. So, with adrenaline and excitement overriding whatever common sense one might expect a nine-year-old girl to have, she asked a question that would, she knew, change her life.

“Hi. I’m Catherine Kane. Can I go with you?”

**_Back in Starling City, present-day….._ **

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(Malcolm Merlyn’s POV)

With whatever warmth he could stoke up in himself, Malcolm smiled when he thought about what happened from that day. He especially remembered returning to that airport later, with adoption papers in one hand and his compound bow in the other, and the wolfish grin on his adopted daughter’s face when they showed the security staff what they had learned.

So, when he thought of what the Green Arrow and Black Canary were promising to do, he didn’t much mind. He had his daughter, the finest female warrior he had ever seen. What could those 2 inexperienced kids possibly have that beat her, or him for that matter?


	8. Ready To Begin

**_At Wildcat Muay Thai Gym in the Glades…._ **

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(Oliver Queen’s POV)

If he was going to work out, and be taught to fight properly by whoever it was that Ted Grant had managed to find, Oliver thought it would be best to be properly prepared. The trouble with this was that he could not think of what that would look like. He knew next to nothing about his trainer, and that filled him with a nervousness he did not particularly relish having.

He had spent five years being taught the lesson again and again that he couldn’t always trust people to have his best interests at heart, or even to be worthy of his trust. But, he thought, bringing arrows and his pine-green carbon-fiber compound bow to this situation would cause more trouble than was, perhaps, it would be worth at the moment. So, regretfully, he left it back home in its velvet-lined case.

Walking in the front door of the gym, then, he did have his gear bag. But because he didn’t know what he was going for, whether he was going to have a karate teacher or a taekwondo black belt, he packed the bare necessities. (In a sign that he was feeling more like himself every day, he couldn’t help but hum that Jungle Book song in his head as he thought of that fact.)

A mouthpiece, a Muay Thai cup, and some hand wraps were all he thought he needed. There was no reason, none at all, that he thought he would need much more. He had a base of skills, those 5 years away having ensured he knew enough about the Korean martial arts that he wouldn’t die in a hand-to-hand combat situation.

This was about learning, not about getting beaten up.

(Ben Turner’s POV)

Ted Grant had told him, in private and bound by an oath, who his student was and what his skills were. And when he had learned what he was expected to do, Ben Turner suddenly realized that his friend had a truly dark sense of humor. This was not training a nine-year-old from the ground up, where he could be expected to be overly patient in correcting the sort of bad habits that a grade-schooler learning the martial arts would have.

Here, this was worse. Because for five years, Oliver Queen had been picking up little bits and pieces of various martial arts but nothing significant enough to truly have developed a style. This was, as Ben was thinking of it, a good thing. 

Between himself and Ted, they had learned every kick-based style that had existed throughout Asia. And really, at its core, that was what Oliver needed. He needed something so that, when the time came that the criminals of this city realized the true skill level of the heroes who had sworn their lives and sacred honors to protect it, he wouldn’t be pigeonholed as just an archer. The city specifically, and heroism in general, required more from people than **THAT**. So, if they had to make a style out of cousins of Muay Thai and the finer points of all the Korean martial arts, they would. He was going to be prepared to defend his city no matter who came to harm it.

But, and this he specifically realized when he saw an impossibly young kid walk up to him who he knew was Oliver Queen, the Green Arrow would need something else, someone else, besides just a taekwondo grandmaster to teach him. This was a hard job he had chosen, and there weren’t too many people you could talk about it with who could understand.

Come to think of it, Ted and he shared this in common. For their students, and he had absolutely no doubt whatsoever that Ted was doing the same work for Laurel that he was doing for Oliver, they would be people who listened.

The Green Arrow and the Black Canary were going to do their absolute best to save their city. It would be up to Ted Grant and Ben Turner to be the steel at their backs while they tried.

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

For five years, he had cultivated quite a few skills that the old him would have never needed, or particularly desired. Even though most of them had a blood-tinged aftertaste, he had to admit that they were deeply useful for the man that he now was. But beneath the archery, and the ability to live off of the land, the one thing that had always been the most useful to him was learning how to read people.

A lot of times, he had noticed, people talked with their eyes, and the way they moved, before their mouths were even able to get involved. And once you knew the cues, saw the tricks, making sure people got exactly what they expected from you was easy.

But this Ben Turner was different. Oliver very quickly got the sense that trying to play a game with this guy, or tell him something beyond the truth, would not end well for him. Besides, this was a friend of Laurel’s uncle Ted, and he did not want to put a wedge between them for something that wasn’t necessary to do.

As he thought of it further, what good would it do if he tried to play some kind of trick on the person who had been brought in to train him? He needed to learn. This Ben Turner was going to teach him everything there was to know.

So, he did what any student worth a damn was supposed to do.

He bowed in front of this obvious taekwondo grandmaster.

“My name is Oliver Queen. Whatever you are willing to teach me, I am willing to learn” he said, with humility that he realized was no longer just a put-on, but a statement of fact. Truly, he really was willing to learn.

His city demanded it. Laurel needed it from him. What better reasons could there be?

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

It was a normal day, so Laurel was doing what Lady Shiva had trained her to do. She had spent five years in that monastery in Indonesia, training every day multiple hours a day until she could read a fight and attack opponents blindfolded. (The time she _ACTUALLY_ did that, and ended up beating 2 10th-dan taekwondo fighters and a world-class Muay Thai fighter, was a feeling she didn’t think she’d relish as much as she actually did.)

Lady Shiva had made it clear to her that a great martial artist never stopped learning, never stopped trying to master new forms even in those styles they felt themselves the most comfortable with. So, she was looking forward to trying some new kicking techniques and setups in the Southern variant of dragon-style kung fu. Ted had made it clear to her that she relied on her punches too easily, and that with the power she quite obviously held in her legs and how long they were anyway, she would be better served making sure people could not get close enough for blade work or a pistol. Besides, from what she could remember of the forms Master Song had shown her, there were some really interesting variations on crescent and butterfly kicks that could help her in her work should she feel confident enough to use them without thinking.

Thinking about that, and what had caused her to have that idea, almost made her laugh. Five years ago, if you had asked Dinah Laurel Lance anything about martial arts, there would have been a realistic chance that she would have mentioned some karate movie she saw on UHF and that would have been that.

But now, because of that man made of lightning who she STILL knew next to nothing about, her whole life, and the path she had set herself on, was irrevocably changed. Even though she couldn’t tell anyone outside of the people in this life who she actually was, she knew it was still an honorable life she had chosen.

And, watching Oliver train, she was proud he had chosen both her and this life. She always knew, even when her sister and father didn’t, precisely the kind of man he truly was. There was, and probably always would be, some of that roguish charm still in there. He liked making people happy too much to not have some of that in him.

But, and this she knew as well as she knew her own name, that was all surface-level. His heart, body, and soul belonged to her now, and she him. They were partners forged in crucibles that, while not shared, made them the people they were always _DESTINED_ to become.

So, while she practiced her kicks, she’d watch Oliver train. They were meant to be prepared, to be ready. Because Ted Grant had told her they needed to be, that there were people asking him if he could get in touch with the Green Arrow and the Black Canary. The city needed them. It was time to answer the call.

**_Meanwhile, in Central City at Mercury Labs…._ **

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(Barry Allen’s POV)

He still didn’t know how he had managed to pull it off, but he loved every second of what his new life was now in a way his old life never could measure up to.

Sure, there were stressors. For one, somehow Hartley Rathaway had thought about bankrolling the Flash and been so utterly insulted when he wanted to stay independent that he had, instead, bankrolled Mick, Leonard, and Axel Walker to destroy him. He had even made the cold gun, heat gun, and seemingly every variant of bomb known to man just to make the point clear that “no one turns down Hartley Rathaway”. Secondly, he had spent a lot of time trying to figure out if Thawne had figured out the deal Barry had made. For all of his faults, Barry could freely admit that Thawne was a genius. He would have to have known that Barry could not be as fast as he was without experience. That war was coming, and Barry did not relish it when it got here.

But, compared to the good in his life, those stressors were meaningless. For one, Tina McGee and Mercury Labs had been a godsend. She, with a smile on her face, had explained that she had done her doctoral dissertation about possible “genetically enhanced humans” and was more than happy to assist Barry in figuring out the best way to both use his speed to do good, and to create rapid cures for certain aging-related diseases. Caitlin and Cisco were working there too, and they had helped to create his suit and the bio-medical tech that made sure he wasn’t going to die out there or go into hypoglycemic shock like last time.

But the biggest one was on the news two weeks ago. From Starling City, the Green Arrow and the Black Canary had busted Adam Hunt. Together.

He had done his job.


	9. The Second To Fall

(Author’s Note: This took place three weeks after the last chapter. Assume small raids on street gangs, but nothing particularly serious until now.)

**_At the Starling City Ironworks………_ **

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(Laurel Lance’s POV)

They were going out hunting again. And, as Ted and Ben had promised them, this would be different than the 1st time. For one, and this she was still unsure about, they were going to be “properly suited up” for work. This had been a thing Ted had been rather insistent about when they had first gotten started. Apparently, to hear him tell it, there were stories chapter and verse about vigilantes who could do good, but had been waylaid because they simply showed no interest in the little things.

It was weird to know that her Uncle Ted, the sweet man who brought her homemade churros for her birthday and called her his “Pajarito” which meant little bird in Spanish, was also apparently a vigilante from a time long ago. But, if it helped her and Oliver, it was a strangeness that she could find herself overcoming. She wanted to do good, they all did. And so, for what felt like months, she had submitted herself to being measured all over for her new uniform. Being poked, prodded, and gawked at was not something she was comfortable with. But when Ted, and Oliver, ripped her old black-and-yellow gi that Lady Shiva had made for her into pieces with a dual-bladed Chinese jian and one of his old arrows, respectively, she saw the point of the measuring.

Tonight, their target had been picked. It was Josiah Williamson IV, a name that screamed old money and intolerance. And, just like last time, he had been flaunting his wealth and resources while beneath him, his city choked.

He was one of those people who bought high-rises and apartment buildings throughout the city and kept the properties to be tax havens and used by Saudi and Emirati princes, refusing to let anyone in the city have access to his buildings and violating about 8 city ordinances to do it. And, having spent time around her father Quentin while he grumbled about it over pasta and salad, she knew the city had a growing, but well-hidden, homeless population who just needed a chance.

Her and Oliver shared this idea, and right now that’s all it was, that people in this city had pride. She could still remember, and she knew most people could too, the years when the Easley Bridge was swaying with trucks bringing in fresh-cut wood for the paper mills in town, places that produced everything from textbooks to paper towels. You could **LIVE** off of salaries like those, and people had.

It was hard work, sure, and not everyone could do it. But people took pride in knowing that they were doing something with their hands, and the city bustled with pride and families. People lived here, grew old here. It was a fair game. You work hard for us, and we make sure you can live your retirement years on a pension with some strength behind it.

But now? There was no housing, no pensions for the residents of the city to live on. Unless you could code, or had elite-level schooling, living in Starling City was something that was harder and harder to do.

Tonight, they’d take one more step to see that change happen.

But first, she had to get dressed.

**_A few hours later on the Magnificent Mile……_ **

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(Oliver Queen’s POV)

They were much more prepared now than they had been, and they would need to be. Based solely on their last mission, it was clear that the rich and landed of Starling City had been properly prepared. For one, all the windows to Mr. Williamson’s penthouse had not just been closed, but reinforced with double-paned thick glass. A grappling arrow was not going to get him in there.

Secondly, just by looking around and seeing the security setup, they could tell that their skimpy reputation had already preceded them. There were snipers here, and Oliver guessed they were former elite commandos judging by how they moved and carried themselves. It didn’t matter, though. None of it did.

Right now, the man who hired all these elite security people to guard him while he ate a chateaubriand steak with wine that cost more than some people’s rent and mortgage was comfortable and content. He knew what he was doing and he didn’t care who he was hurting.

By the end of the night, though, he would. They would, at the end of an arrow and the point of a boot, make sure he understood that actions have consequences. And when your actions harmed the people of Starling City, made it so that people slept in shelters on cots instead of in warm beds surrounded by the people that they loved? This could not stand, and he was sure that, with the aid of his partner, he could do something about it.

Speaking of which, where was his partner?

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Even here, in an outfit that was purpose-built to her exact body type and designed so that she could do all she needed to save the city, Laurel Lance didn’t feel like a hero. She supposed the day would come when she would, when it would all feel normal and natural to be on a rooftop across the street from a high-end penthouse knowing the only resident at home was about to have his entire life upended. But today was not that day.

Instead, if she had to put a finger on how she felt, it was still like she had to learn so much about what being a vigilante WAS. Right now, though, she should join Oliver.

She didn’t truly know what Oliver had gone through five years ago, and what the skills with a bow he so obviously had cost his mind and his soul. The time would come when they, with a roaring fire in the background and as much love as they could muster, would let the scars from his past release so that he could heal from them, and finally truly become the hero in both skill and temperament that his city deserved. But that was for later. Right now, she needed to join him at the rooftop so they could get started.

Her costume, and Ted had taken great pains to make sure she thought of this in exactly that way, was flattering without being trashy. Lord knows, Ted had shown her enough pictures of that Hawkgirl woman that she didn’t want to walk around in the best possible version of a onesie. So, from arm-to-arm and neck-to-toe, she was covered in a vinyl and spandex mesh. Movement, and the ability to throw every kick in the playbook, was paramount here.

Ted had gotten her some kickboxing shoes to help with grip and traction, and even made sure she could run in them by having her do 110-meter sprints in addition to running a mile in them just to make sure they served all possible needs.

As she stood behind the Green Arrow, and watched as he studied the building, it felt more normal. They were going to be justice’s heralds tonight.

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Firing a grappling arrow onto a window washer’s scaffold at the middle of the penthouse, thanking every god he could think of that it was there, Oliver and Laurel landed on the scaffold and hatched a plan. Counting the throwing darts in the sleeve of his uniform, he realized he had packed enough tranquilizer darts to take out the snipers on the rooftop.

Sure, he couldn’t fire his bow to do it. The simple drawing back of his compound bow would make the kind of noise he didn’t want, and would require him to fight before he wanted to. These snipers, and come to think of it the men who held them, were former members of the GIGN. If this was going to be done, it had to be done right. So, grabbing 3 darts and handing one to Laurel before gesturing where it was intended to go, the Green Arrow hoped things went according to plan.

And at the start, they did. The three snipers were disabled quickly, and the Green Arrow and Black Canary moved through the rooftop pool area and towards the office. Nocking a router arrow in his compound bow, as Laurel moved into an Eagle Claw stance, they prepared to have things well in hand.

Of course, at this moment, it all went pear-shaped. Josiah Williamson pulled an antique pistol from under his desk and got off a lucky shot that managed to hit Oliver in the leg. Not enough to cripple him, but enough to send him to a knee while Laurel threw one of her escrima sticks and knocked him out. Taking the router arrow, and making a call to Ted Grant, the Black Canary moved into action and began dispatching security guards who seemed to appear from nowhere while Oliver was a stationery turret and picking people off from a distance. Finally downloading the information on the illegally squatted buildings and sending them off to the city’s branch of the US Health and Human Services, Laurel picked Oliver up as they hobbled over to the window-washing scaffold and headed to the waiting van of Ted Grant.

This had been a disaster. Sure, they had gotten the job done. But they needed more help, and an actual team.

“Well, guess we really do need a team” said Oliver Queen, and Laurel Lance was too tired and fried to argue with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you're wondering this is the Black Siren suit from S8, cut to fit Laurel's new physique.


	10. The Third: Curtis Holt

**_At Oliver Queen’s penthouse in University Hill……_ **

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(Laurel Lance’s POV)

They were going to move in together, she knew that. But at the moment, Dinah Laurel Lance wished they had started that work a lot earlier. One, because she couldn’t seem to find anything to cook breakfast in that she didn’t very much want to not get dirty. Although, as she stood in her boyfriend’s kitchen on her tip toes looking for things to make him a traditional pan-asian breakfast, she supposed he particularly wasn’t minding the fact that she had gone with a pair of gold-colored compression shorts and a University of Washington tank top. She did not get to a place where she could squat 245 kg, and deadlift 225 kg, without realizing the effects of her new muscle on not just herself, but Oliver. There was a lot more to her lower half than there had been before, and she supposed both her fighting training and strength training was down to that. And if that meant that sometimes her boyfriend gawked at her, this was a curse she could live with. Laurel wanted to be a role model for young girls, and the idea that she could prove you could lift heavy weights, and be an intense fighter, while still being a girl.

The other problem was that, at the moment, they hadn’t come up with a reason why he had gotten shot. Sure, she knew the reason why. A round from a pistol had gone through his kneecap, and while the doctors at Krieg Memorial had been highly skilled in performing surgery to prevent any more serious problems, they had impressed on Ollie that he needed to go undergo serious therapy to get his legs back to where they needed to be. So, with Laurel staying around to “supervise”, Ollie had spared no expense in hiring the best of the best. He figured, as he explained over dinner the previous night, that their city deserved the best possible version of both of them that there could be. If it just so happened that Ted Grant and Ben Turner were accredited physical therapists, well then wasn’t that a lovely coincidence? This she understood. But still, the reason gnawed at her. Sure, she could explain it as a mugging gone bad but no one had actually seen Ollie out last night anywhere, and a thing like that without witnesses was just BEGGING for someone to do some investigation.

But as she thought of it, no one who could matter to their mission would. Starling City was deeply corrupt, down to the foundation, and the city’s police agencies were of absolutely no help in the matter, and might have been actively running interference. If things were going to get fixed, they had to do it themselves.

**_Later that afternoon, at Wildcat Muay Thai and Kickboxing in the Glades….._ **

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(Ted Grant’s POV)

He had never decided to run a full-scale assault on the criminal elite of Starling City, and seeing his niece’s boyfriend hobble into the gym with his knee wrapped up tight and on crutches, he was beginning to understand why. That mission last night had been a shitshow from the word go. They hadn’t conceived of the possibility that rookie vigilantes would have spooked someone to the point that they would have hired armed ex-GIGN soldiers to watch over their penthouse. More so, Williamson being a collector of rare self-loading pistols and handguns was something that they should have known about.

This, this feeling that they were perpetually behind, was why he focused on gangs and drug dealers. But his niece didn’t want to do that, couldn’t do that. She saw deep conspiracies to keep the people of the Glades poor, under-fed, and over-dosed. And, because her parents were good people and had taught her to always look out for those who were being victimized, she couldn’t just let that go on. And as he thought of it, neither could Ted. What good would he be as a hero if he did?

What example would he be setting for Yolanda, or Valentia for that matter, if he saw injustice and ignored it because the defeating of it would be too hard?

Besides, they could win. He knew it like he knew he was taking his girls to Mexico to see where their abuela and abuelita grew up as soon as they were able. If they could get Oliver to a place where his skills with his hands, knees, elbows, and feet matched what he could do with a bow they’d be in business. He knew Ben could handle that, just like he was sure he could keep Laurel at a master’s level in her chosen arts.

When he had given up his role as Wildcat, he thought his life would be boring. Teaching kids kickboxing and Muay Thai was fulfilling, especially when he saw some of his students winning tournaments in Thailand. But this? This was what he was meant to be doing.

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

At this moment, if not for the fact he could hear Ted Grant’s radio playing what he had to guess were classical Mexican and Tex-Mex music, he realized he could just as easily be back on the beaches of Yeon-Og again being drilled by Slade. At this moment, he realized their differences though. Slade had been trying to teach him survival, nothing more than that. Every one of their training sessions had, as an overtone, been about making sure he lived through the day.

This, though, was different. Here, he wasn’t about to get killed by walking out of the gym. So, when Ben Turner propped his leg up on a chair and started drilling him in all of the hand-fighting forms inherent to taekwondo and tang soo do, he felt a kind of contentment he would never have felt on Yeon-Og.

Much like Slade had been on the island, Ben was relentless in teaching him, making sure he would never be in a position where he thought of himself as just an archer but as a fully-formed and well-rounded combatant. But, he wasn’t constantly in fear of having a gun pulled on him if he asked a question or needed a drill re-taught. That, he supposed, was the difference between always having to fight for your life and just getting to learn. It was, as much as the notion of working out in styles that had existed since the very dawn of a nation could be, a much more relaxing experience than what he had gone through with Slade.

Still, though, he wished he was throwing kicks. Even with a still-healing bullet wound, the notion of continuing to throw strike after strike until his arms felt like they were made out of rubber was slowly becoming less preferable than just biting down and throwing kicks on his bad leg. But he knew the work was necessary.

Later, that would work be manifested in the form of therapy for his leg. There would be, needed to be, more he had to learn before he was allowed to walk free and train in the way he needed to be.

Because, honestly, his city demanded it from him. Laurel had it. In her soul, now, she was a martial artist, and an excellent one. Ted was working with her to develop the knowledge to hurt, to use her skills and her power to do damage when damage needed to be done. He needed to match her.

He could envision a life where she was abandoned by him, forsaken when she needed him the most. He did not want that for her now, and in order to make sure it didn’t happen, he would keep training.

**_A few hours later, outside the gym……_ **

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(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Every inch of each one of her thighs was on fire. She did not know that there were that many different varieties of kicks to **_THROW_** , but she had done them all under the watchful eyes of her uncle.

Even now, after everything that had happened with Ollie, there was still a part of her that was thrilled to be training under Uncle Ted. She knew what he had done. The first American to train Muay Thai in Thailand under the old masters, in the classic techniques. As a heavyweight he had won multiple titles and prestigious tournaments, and had earned a personal commendation from the World Muay Thai Federation for his work in popularizing the art form. So, when he told her he needed to see just how hard and accurate she could be throwing kicks, she did not take it as a criticism. She took it as a challenge, and at no point in her life, had Dinah Laurel Lance ever thought about not answering a challenge.

So she started firing off body kicks on a heavybag that, to her ears at least, sounded like gunshots going off. But Uncle Ted remained unimpressed, proclaiming that for someone with her legs and fundamentals he expected her kicks to sound like nuclear bombs landing. As he explained it, “Pajarito, you look like a world-class kicker. **SHOW IT TO ME**.” With her goal set, she kept throwing body kicks and multiple variants on the classic roundhouse. She had been, and once Uncle Ted mentioned it she could see it as clear as day, training at something near half-speed. She didn’t want to embarrass people, after all, considering she had been trained personally by what everyone with eyes to see knew was the best martial artist in the world.

But Ted didn’t know that. Instead, he smiled wide as the sun when she began to land kicks with the force of a locomotive. If Ted wanted to see what happened when she really put the hammer down, he would. The side effect of that, of course, was that after she worked out, and availed herself of a post-workout shake, she could feel her legs tingling with exhaustion.

So when she walked out of the gym, making it a point to be as nice and friendly as she could be to the gym-goers who suddenly looked at her as though she was the single most frightening person they had ever seen, her mind was simply on getting home and soaking in Ollie’s hot tub.

She wanted that so much that it took her a microsecond to realize that someone was being hassled in front of the BBQ food truck across the street from the gym. Groaning, realizing just how much running was going to HURT but knowing she had to do it nonetheless, Laurel dropped her gym bag and started running.

(Curtis Holt’s POV)

There were things he had forgotten about living in Starling City. At the moment, the biggest one was that if you were going to go to pick up lunch at a food truck in the Glades, it was probably a good idea to not drop your wallet. Because as soon as he did that, he bent down to pick it up and suddenly realized that he was surrounded by three guys who seemed to be out of “Rent-a-Thug” central casting.

He couldn’t fight them off, he knew that. Despite the fact that he was an Olympic-level decathlete who had won a bronze medal, hand-to-hand fighting had never really interested him. At this moment, though, he kind of wished it had. Being an Olympic-level athlete, and then a mechanical engineer and technical genius, was not going to help him here. Then, he saw it. More to the point, he saw her.

Curtis Holt was not interested in women. He was a married man, to a husband he loved with his whole heart. And yet, despite that obvious fact, he was also not **BLIND**. In front of him, her entire posture radiating someone who deeply disapproved of what was going on, was perhaps one of the most physically impressive women he had ever seen. But it was more than that. Beneath her beauty, it was her kindness. As her eyes blazed in disapproval, she managed to hold a warm smile while he got to his feet.

And then, all of a sudden, it dawned on him that he was not just standing next to a good Samaritan. He was in the presence of the honest-to-goodness Black Canary.

He, like just about everyone else who lived here, knew that the city was in the midst of a crime wave that seemed to have been going on for generations. But, he also knew, the Black Canary and the Green Arrow had promised to help, to put things to the way they should be.

And at this moment, he knew what he had to do. His whole life, all of it, had led him to this point.

“Hello, my name is Curtis Holt. I get the feeling we should talk…. Canary”


	11. Discovery

**_At the Starling City Ironworks…._ **

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(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Of course, Laurel would have managed to pull this off. Their styles, and the way they moved, were **distinctive**. He knew that.

So, the thought that someone would eventually be read into their mission did not seem as wholly ridiculous as he might have wished it to be. But there was a difference between being forced into doing something, and having the choice to do it. And right now, as he stood in what he was beginning to think of as their base, it dawned on him that he did not have a choice. To do what their city required, to be the heroes who would bring their home out of the darkness and into the light, they would have to be the best of themselves.

And to do that, Oliver and Laurel could not work alone. The thing with Josiah Harrison had proved that more than mere words ever could. But to have someone he didn’t know, someone who he was just meeting now for the first time, be one of those people by his side was still a rough thing to have to deal with. But the need to serve, to perform to a higher standard for those who needed your help, was a strong enough reason. And he supposed, from the bits and pieces that Laurel had told him, this Curtis Holt had that need. If that was true, and he knew it was because Laurel lying to him about anything more serious than her favorite coffee was an impossibility, that would be a good place to start.

(Curtis Holt’s POV)

In the car ride over, Laurel had explained to her what she needed, what THEY needed, from him. He was still so utterly stunned that he was being brought into this, expected to help with it, that he hadn’t turned on the part of his brain that realized there was real work for him to do.

And then, he pulled into the abandoned ironworks and he saw everything. Or more to the point, nothing. All that was there was a basic weight set, and the beginnings of a training setup. Seeing this now, for the first time, two disparate emotions ran through his head. Fascination, and disappointment.

He was absolutely gobsmacked with how they had managed to beat Adam Hunt and Josiah Harrison with absolutely no support staff, or pre-mission planning, of any kind. It gave him a sense of just how skilled they truly were that they could have gotten done what they did with no help whatsoever.

But, to know that they could have had assistance like what he knew he could provide and didn’t, made him so sad. His city, the one he had grown up in and become an Olympian to honor, was fundamentally wounded. To close that wound, and allow it to heal into the thing it should have always become, they needed professional help. Not people guessing they were right, but not knowing the craft of what they were doing.

This could not stand. He would not allow it. If he was going to help the Green Arrow and the Black Canary, and he knew in his soul that’s precisely what he was going to do, they needed to be the best he could be.

So, he did 2 things to serve that end. He would make a shopping list, and he would make a phone call.

But then, he saw him. Oliver Queen, shirtless and in nothing more than a pair of tight lime-green compression shorts, running his way through a deadlift ladder that looked right out of the stuff he had run during his run to the Olympics.

“You’re married, he’s straight” Curtis reminded himself, and then remembered he had work to do.

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

One of the things he had enjoyed doing, and something Ben not only encouraged him to continue but gave him a routine he had somehow grabbed from members of the South Korean weightlifting team, was lifting weights. This was a thing, while his fighting skill was still being improved, that he could share with Laurel. Every day, whether it be training side-by-side in the dojo or here lifting weights in silence, he felt more of a connection to her. And as he did so, he began to feel like two halves of himself were slowly turning into one whole being. The man on the island, trained to shoot arrows at the feet of master archers who demanded nothing less than absolute perfection, was becoming one with the person who made Laurel dinner every night to prove he could still be a lover and a superhero.

Even here, though, Yeon Og remained in the back of his mind reminding him of the pain he suffered. It had been Slade, with the aid of a barbell that seemed to be more rust than iron, who had taught him to lift weights. But it had been Shado, Slade’s love on the island, who had made the act seem fun. Watching her do something called the “salmon ladder”, as he remembered it, was perhaps the most transfixing thing he had ever seen. Even if, as he remembered now with a smile on his face, he was transfixed for an entirely different reason than Slade had been.

If he could convince this engineer to put his tongue back in his mouth and start fabricating the things they needed, he figured the salmon ladder would be the first thing he wanted done. He would need an Olympic-level training setup. Before too much longer, people at Wildcat’s were going to start asking complicated questions and he didn’t want to put Laurel in that position.

He didn’t mind people thinking less of him in the slightest. Lord knows the person he was, and the person he wanted the city to believe he still was, had done nothing to deserve anyone’s trust. But Laurel? She was an angel, with a warrior’s heart, and no part of her deserved to be doubted.

He needed to be better for her, to use every skill and resource at his disposal, to make sure they could be what their city needed. They were unstoppable. They just needed the support to prove that.

**_Back at Queen Mansion……._ **

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(Moira Queen’s POV)

Ever since this Green Arrow and Black Canary had showed up, Moira felt somehow like she wasn’t threatened. Sure, there were whispers that they were coming after the city’s rich and resource-greedy landed gentry, but she didn’t think of herself or her family as those types of people. Sure, they lived in a mansion in the good side of town and had the creature comforts. But she also knew how they treated Raisa, and the rest of the staff of the mansion. It did not seem like a family who invested as much as they did into the people they considered family would ever be a threat from people who were playing Robin Hood and Maid Marian.

But, if she was being honest, that wasn’t all of it. Moira Queen had been the right hand to her husband since Robert and her met while Robert was going to Stanford to get his business degree. They had agreed on having a son and a daughter, and she had taken it as her responsibility to make sure she knew them both inside and out. Because of that work, and make no mistake it had been work, she felt like her growing instinct that she KNEW the Green Arrow somehow was something she needed to sit with. Those instincts, the skills that told her what government contracts to bid for and what others to discreetly turn down, had been a boon to her throughout her life and they would do her well. 

Then, it hit her. Of course. In that moment, she realized exactly why she recognized the Green Arrow. Who else would it have been? Oliver. No one knew what he did in those 5 years away in Korea, but he had come back changed. For one, he was more openly affectionate with Thea, her, and especially Laurel. Apparently, from the whispered conversations that she had overheard, his time on that island called Yeon-Og had only served to remind him of what was most important. And, in a revelation that thrilled her, he had explained that love was the most important.

And if the Green Arrow was her son, she knew what she needed to do. She would be his support system, like she had been all her life. Those 5 years away from him had made her realize that she wasn’t the best version of herself without her kids in her life.

That was going to change. No matter what they needed, she would support them while they went about the business of finding it for themselves. She wouldn’t coddle them. Robert wouldn’t have wanted that.

It was past time to honor the man her husband had been.

**_Meanwhile, at STAR Labs in Central City……_ **

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(Eobard Thawne’s POV)

There were advantages about being from the future. For one, his scientific knowledge was such that he had calibrated the upcoming particle accelerator explosion to perfection. It would hit only in Central City, nowhere else. Lord knows that if he somehow managed to screw THAT up, and send the wave over to that den of crime in Starling City, he’d never know peaceful sleep again.

But, at this moment, his biggest advantage is that he knew how a speedster’s lightning worked. It was like your blood type, for non-metahumans. Even now, with his own speed throttled by circumstances out of his control, he could tell the differences between all the types of speedsters. If your lightning was yellow in color, whether lemon or gold, you were accessing the pure speed force. His was red, but that was because he had managed to tap into the speed force’s opposite number: a negative speed force that fed off of hate and rage. Blue was…. Well, let’s hope the two people who had blue lightning never showed up here. He’d need to be far away from wherever they were if that ever happened.

So, he knew what Barry Allen had done. He knew that, somehow, the Barry we were seeing was a time-traveler from in the future. He didn’t know from how far in the future, or why he had traveled back. All he knew is that the Flash needed to be brought to heel. And it was going to be him that did it.


	12. The Starting Line

**_At Starling City Ironworks………._ **

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(Oliver Queen’s POV)

He needed to get his phone encrypted, or get a new one. Because right now, he was coming to the very quick realization that if anyone ever called him while he was out being the Green Arrow the entire game would be over. His mom was calling him. Ever since he had returned from Yeon Og, he had done what he thought was a pretty good job of hiding his true self from his family. apparently, his mother had finally had enough of his games and called his bluff.

But for some reason, it didn’t bother him. Ever since he had returned home, he could see visions of his life without his family in them and it hurt in ways he couldn’t put together properly. So if she wanted to connect with him, wanted to be a part of his life, he’d let her. He’d let them all. He couldn’t be the man his father had given up his life for if he let the Queen name wither and die. He couldn’t be the man Slade and Shado had hugged goodbye, before they started their new lives together, if he ignored what they asked him to be.

He can still remember hearing her Korean-accented English telling him that he needed to be a man who refused to let what he had done turn him into someone who closed his heart to love, and he vowed to keep that promise.

Grabbing his quiver, and packing his mint-green carbon-fiber compound bow, he texted Laurel to head over to the bunker. Curtis Holt was here, after all, fabricating what looked like a pretty decent bowyer area. That’d be useful, and they would need some new suits before too long.

Things were coming together.

**_Meanwhile, at Starling City’s 20 th Precinct……_ **

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(Detective 1st Grade Quentin Larry Lance’s POV)

All of his career as a cop, he had found that making people think you were dumber than you actually were was a really good way of making sure you cleared cases. As he had learned, if people thought you were stupid, they would be less likely to keep to their knitting about their stories. They’d forget details, repeat stories incorrectly, and generally not be as smart as they would be with detectives they thought were their intellectual equals. People told secrets in his presence, because they didn’t think he was paying attention to what was being said.

But right now, as he drank some of the typically-ghastly police station coffee, he was beginning to realize the problem with the persona he had built. Because, apparently, Laurel had internalized the idea her father wasn’t really paying attention to the conversations she was having around him. Sure, she was talking in Chinese, but how exactly did one expect to become a Detective 1st Grade without knowing enough Chinese to interview shopkeepers in Chinatown or comfort witnesses to the crimes of the Triad?

Furthermore, eavesdropping on their phone calls, as both Di and Quentin had explained, was not something their father knew he was doing some of the time. It was the curse of the “detective brain” as he put it to both Laurel and Sara. No matter how small, if there was a mystery in his life he simply could not allow it to lie unsolved.

Apparently, when she had told him and Dinah about taking a meditation retreat in Indonesia for 5 years, that was only half-true. She had gone to whoever this Lady Shiva was and picked up just about every martial art that could exist. And apparently, she was using those skills to be this Black Canary woman.

He wasn’t quite sure how to feel about that. Quentin had told his daughters again and again that if you needed the law, it could provide you justice. And for most of his career, for most of his life as a cop, he had found that particular truism correct. But he was also not stupid. He knew there were cases, and criminals, he was not allowed near. And when he went to regional conferences, he saw the wince in other detective’s eyes when he introduced himself as being from Starling City.

He wanted to be a detective. He wanted to help people and do good. And in this goal, his daughter had followed him. And if she wanted to do it, and thought that the bureaucracy wouldn’t help her, he wouldn’t stand in her way.

Of course, that meant Oliver Queen was with her. He wasn’t stupid. If Laurel did anything, Oliver was right behind her making sure she felt supported and safe. And if he was being honest with himself, it was only the idea that Jesus himself down from the mountain wouldn’t be good enough for Laurel that made him dislike Oliver Queen. He knew Oliver had her best interests at heart, whatever those might happen to be. So sure, he’d always remind Oliver he could shoot him and leave no witnesses, but there’d be no heat in the threat. Not anymore.

He couldn’t KNOW, of course, what she was up to. He was an officer of the court, after all, and if someone was breaking the law he was duty-bound to intervene. But if he just happened to leave out contact information for an FBI friend of his who happened to have ins with just about every government and counter-terrorism agency with initials? What would be the harm in that?

**_Meanwhile, at Queen Consolidated……_ **

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(Moira Queen’s POV)

Her son having returned home from wherever this Yeon-Og place in the Yellow Sea was with a taste for Korean food was not particularly surprising. So, when she knew she was having him over to talk about her discoveries and about how it was that she wanted to help, she figured the best way to handle that would be by making sure he had delicacies he thought of as comfort food. This was going to be an emotional conversation, so it felt right to make sure it wasn’t also a tense one as well. She had thought about what she would say to him all day and night since she figured it out.

She, honestly, would probably never sleep again without some pharmacological aid. There was no way you could know your child was a vigilante, someone battling the forces of evil and greed and putting their lives on the line every night to do so, and sleep an unrested sleep. This would probably, if Laurel’s family had the penny drop in the same manner that she did, require a phone call to Dinah Drake-Lance over some coffee cake and maybe a nice cheese plate to discuss how she coped with it.

The question she had to ask herself now was this: If her secrets came to light, if the things she had done to protect the family and their status ever became known, what would Oliver do?

She realized she had approved of him being the Green Arrow without thinking through all the probabilities. If he ever found out, or one of his confederates did, that’d be a bridge she crossed when she came to it.

He was family, after all. If it came to it she could make him understand.

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Five years on an island, being trained in everything from living off the land to archery and advanced combat tactics, meant that he simply no longer had the luxury of walking into a room and not judging it for threats. It was an instinct he wished he hadn’t developed, but at the same time knew he needed.

It also didn’t help his paranoia that he hadn’t slept, plagued as he had been by more of those visions that he had been having ever since he got on the boat and ended up on Yeon Og. Increasingly, though, something weird was happening. He could se himself, standing on a platform surrounded by lightning of multiple colors, and he could see a different existence playing out in front of him. There was a blonde woman scowling and screaming at him, nothing like Laurel’s lovely brown hair, and so much pain. His mom, Tommy, Sara, Laurel’s father, and the city multiple times were all destroyed. Finally, defending the world from one more attack, he died too. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

Laurel, he could see EVERYTHING. There was an Oliver there who neglected her on his return, who stood idly by as she fell into addiction, rebuked her when she wanted to join his life, and was there when she died but didn’t have the courage to tell her he loved her back. Was this him? Had this been a version of his life he was seeing now?

No matter the reason, it wouldn’t be him. He wouldn’t allow it. There would be no chance, no reason at all, that he would ever not be by Laurel’s side.

So, as he walked into his mother’s office for what he knew was as close to a come-to-jesus meeting as he was likely to get, he stood strong and straight. From this moment, until there were simply no more moments left for him, he would be a man Laurel would be proud of. He would be a king for his queen.

(Moira Queen’s POV)

She didn’t love that her son was a vigilante, and there’d be a discussion about bankrolling the best possible version of this bow he was seemingly using. But while she didn’t want him to be doing it, she couldn’t deny what it was doing for him.

The Oliver who had left with her late husband was still finding himself, too eager to stay out late drinking and playing the fool. It’s not that she didn’t love the version of her son from then, but more that she wanted him to be the best version of himself and knew that wasn’t it.

This Oliver, though? He was confident, strong of character, and seemed wiser than before. This was the son who could lead their family into the next generation, she could just tell.

“So, Oliver, tell me something. How long was it going to be before you told me everything about what happened to you in Korea?” she said, hoping she had enough steel in her voice to make it clear that this was a question she wanted a proper answer to.

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Oh. So she had put it together, apparently. That wasn’t particularly surprising. He hadn’t been as secretive as he would have liked, but that was down to exhaustion. Still, though, his vow was pounding in the front of his head like his own heartbeat. So, even though a tiny voice in the back of his head was telling him it was a bad idea, he did what his father would have wanted him to do.

“Dad didn’t die in the waves of the Yellow Sea like I told the court, and the press. He shot himself in front of me, and begged me to save the city and to keep love in my heart. I don’t know what he meant, and to be honest, I’m still working that out. But I will do my best to honor his memory, to become the man he asked me to be and do the things he wanted me to do,” he said, hoping that was enough of the truth while leaving out the things his mother couldn’t know.

“Oliver Jonas Queen, you’re still not telling me everything,” and at that, he froze. She wanted to **KNOW**? That seemed like a terrible idea, designed to do nothing but hurt her. Still, though, he found he couldn’t lie. There was something, some hook in him, that told him he couldn’t lie to his family. He’d need them. After all, those visions had shown him what he had become without them, and without Laurel, and that was nothing he wanted for himself.

“Yes, mom. I am the Green Arrow.”

(Moira Queen’s POV)

It was one thing to know, and another kettle of fish to have it confirmed entirely. But it didn’t matter. Vigilante or not, this was still her son.

“What do you need to be the best?”

**_The Next Morning, at an abandoned Queen Consolidated property….._ **

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(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Oliver had called her to this place, dead-center in the middle of the Glades, saying he had a surprise. Lord knows, since he had returned, he had quite a few surprises. For one, he had somehow found and befriended just about every ethnic restaurant owner in the whole city. So when they went out for Cambodian or Vietnamese food for instance, it no longer felt like they were going out to a restaurant. It felt like they were going to a friend’s house. She could not figure out how he had done it, but it honestly felt like he had somehow become the hero of the Glades.

The second thing was that he had returned from the island, he became a true romantic. They had movie nights now, and dinner dates for just them. It was great to know their love had turned into steel while Oliver was going through his 5 years of torment, because she knew that things would get harder and they’d need that shared commitment.

So, when he pulled up in a mint-green Ducati 999R that appeared to have been custom-made just for him, Laurel was prepared for absolutely anything. So, of course, when a beat-to-all-hell-and-back Honda Civic pulled out and a woman in a doctor’s coat walked out and introduced herself as Dr. Eliza Schwartz, Laurel knew what had happened. Somehow, they had finished constructing their team.

Ted Grant and Ben Turner would make sure they were ready to fight. Curtis Holt would fabricate the weapons, and suits, that they needed while handling communications and logistics. And apparently, this doctor would make sure they were stitched up and ready to keep fighting. Whatever they needed, they would have it now.

Saving the city would be down to their boundless skills now. Laurel was feeling supremely confident.

**_Later that Night……_ **

\---------------------------------------------

As they went to take down James Holder, who was apparently buying up a subsidiary of Queen Consolidated, they noticed how much easier things were. Curtis Holt had found the blueprints, and the fact that the security force were former members of the United States Marine Corp’s Force Recon division and the CIA’s Special Operations division. These, then, were not people who were in any way unfamiliar with the sort of tactics that would be used by vigilantes. Still, though, it didn’t matter. James Holder was selling defective smoke detectors to homeowners throughout the city, so they had to stop him before anyone else died or was greviously injured due to his negligence.

And as they swept through his penthouse, dispatching quickly-overmatched personal security, they found two things. One they expected, and one they didn’t.

The thing they expected? Proof that James Holder knew his smoke detectors were faulty and didn’t care.

The thing they didn’t?

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

There was a whole file on here, with photos, videos, and meeting notes, of something called Tempest. She didn’t know what it was, or what it meant. But the FBI and the state’s office of housing violations were on their way here, because Curtis Holt had called in to their high-priority tip line. So, she downloaded all the info to a thumb drive and prepared to look at it at home.

For some reason, this felt big. And because it did, she wanted to go over it with Oliver. They were heroes now, after all. This was their responsibility.

**_At a place of all space and time……_ **

\---------------------------------------------------

(The Speed Force’s POV)

Barry Allen had always been their favorite speedster, so they made it a point to add things on to his gift that they didn’t tell him about. For one, they were making sure Oliver Queen remembered everything that happened in his life. That whole switching life business had given him just enough attachment to the speed force that they could do this trick.

Barry Allen would be happier when they figured this out, and his happiness was the most important thing.

But they would interfere no more. The Green Arrow was on the right path, and soon the Flash would join them.


	13. And So Our Hunt Begins

**_Back at the Queen Consolidated property on Warner and Galloway……._ **

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

She hadn’t seen any bit of what the new base was going to be. She, and Oliver, had left Curtis, Ted, and Ben to build something based on what they knew their needs would be. So when they came back from dealing with James Holder, and walked into their new base, they had no idea what they were in for.

This meant that she was tremendously, and pleasantly, surprised. In one corner, marked by a screen-printed bird, was what she was now realizing was her area. A wing-chun dummy, several different heavy bags, a few double-end, speed, and cobra bags, and that was just the striking area. There was also a weight room and training area that wouldn’t be out of place at the most recent summer Olympics, and every single piece of equipment was wired to the bleeding edge of audio and video recording.

Raising an eyebrow in both excitement and confusion, Laurel Lance walked over to Curtis Holt who appeared to be calibrating something and asked him what he did.

“Well, you guys are the best of Starling City. Until the people who are supposed to do this step in to do it, you guys are the ones who will fight for this city. So, for as long as that’s true, you guys need to be at your absolute best every time you go out there. We can help you with that. It’s our honor to help you with that. But after you’re done looking around, I made something for both you and Oliver.”

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

This, right here, was what the 5 years on the island had been leading towards. So much suffering, and so many skills developed, to create a place like this. As he had remembered Shado explaining it, first on Yeon-Og and again when he had stumbled across her in Seoul later, ‘the soul of an archer lives in you. All Slade and I did was light the spark.’

As he put his compound bow down on a table he looked around and smiled. Here there was a state-of-the-art practice area with several practice bows and foam arrows and targets, what looked like a fabrication area, and the entire area was wired with radar and speed guns to provide actual real-time feedback. Picking up a bow he smiled, as these were calibrated to his exact balance and draw weight needs. Nocking a foam arrow into a practice compound bow he aimed and fired, smiling as he hit the bullseye with not a ton of effort.

He needed this. This could, and would rather quickly become, a way for him to become what Shado would have wanted him to be: an archer for whom every arrow fired was one more recommitment to the ideals of justice and heroism. He wouldn’t be like the monster Talia had wanted him to be. Laurel wouldn’t be with him if he was, and he didn’t see that man anymore.

If they were going to do what needed to be done, they’d need a place like this. Besides, from what he had been able to overhear, Curtis’s work had not yet finished.

(Curtis Holt’s POV)

The nerves when he started this project, if they were in energy or human form, could power a space shuttle or be the size of Paul Bunyan. To do what needed to happen, to be the heroes everyone in this city needed to get out from under the tremendous weight they were all under, everything he did for them would have to be perfect.

And then Moira Queen called him. He knew who she was. Everyone who traveled in the circles of technology knew who Moira Queen was. She, alongside her husband Walter Steele, had built Queen Consolidated into an absolute goliath in everything from nano-technology to green energy. Apparently, she had figured out what her son was doing and wanted to help. So, not knowing what else to do, she had sent a QC black credit card by bonded courier to his location. This was exactly what he needed.

He had ordered everything state-of-the-art he could think of. Beyond the training equipment and Olympic-quality weight room, he was building the suits for the Green Arrow and Black Canary that would keep them safe from harm as they did what they could to pull their city out of the deepest, darkest, blackest hole that it had ever been in. He had spent days measuring them in their underwear, trying to figure out how big Laurel’s thighs were (23 inches) and where to cut her suit to make sure she could throw just about every kick she needed. That wasn’t too bad, honestly, because he was helping someone who had built a body worthy of awe into a suit that could make her someone her city loved.

Then, because sometimes the world liked to give him a treat and push his professionalism all at once, he had to stand in front of Oliver Queen and do the same thing. That night, as he stitched together and molded a perfect variant of a classic ghillie suit, he remembered the one truism that kept him sane: “You’re married, and he’s straight.”

And now, in front of two people he knew were doing the right thing for the right reasons, he prepared to show off what he justly thought was something close to a pair of masterpieces.

“Ms. Lance, it took me longer than I would have liked. There are many taekwondo doboks and traditional yi-fu that are currently in PAL programs throughout the city simply because they did not do what you would need them to do. For one, they weren’t strong enough. You guys are using arrows and other weapons, which I’ll get to, but that does mean you’ll be going into battle against men with guns. That means your equipment needs to be prepared for that, and so do you.

This is a hapkido dobok in the traditional diamond style, Ms. Lance, with gold and black piping throughout the uniform. I have gone to great lengths to make sure it has the lightness, comfort, and functionality you need to throw every strike and apply every hold. Furthermore, it is made of a proprietary list of nano-technology fabric. It is fitted to your exact body type, and has been tested to withstand everything but a sniper rifle bullet. Also, I made you a classic kusari-fundo for those times when you need to fight but don’t want to get in close or even medium-quarters combat. The weight is a melted-down arrowhead, so I figured you might find that interesting.

As for you, Mr. Queen, this suit you’re seeing is made of something called dwarf-star alloy. It’s rare, immensely durable, and it has been made so that you can hit every shot, from whatever distance you might need to. Furthermore, we’ve kept the hood but made sure the rest of the suit is jade-colored, a brighter-green shade than the one you had previously. If you’re going to be a hero in the light, the hero this city needs, it feels like people ought to be able to see you and rely on you. As far as your primary weapon goes, we’ve given you a 60-arrow quiver loaded with a variety of really interesting trick arrows based on the exhaustive notes that were left here. Also, I took the liberty of re-painting your bow the same color as your suit. Before you get alarmed, that is the only change I made. This bow is perfection, and I understand how important it is to you.

If you don’t mind, I’m going to leave you guys to get used to your new toys. I’m going to have some breakfast, and then sleep for three days.”

**_A few hours later, still at the foundry…………………………………_ **

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

But before she could even slip into her new suit and put it through her paces, the door to the base opened up and in walked Ted Grant and Ben Turner who each whistled, very impressed at the technological advancements they were seeing. But in Ben’s hands, as she was still in the t-shirt and jeans she wore comfortably, there was a blindfold. Instantly, despite her attempts to keep her face impassive, she remembered a secret Oliver had told her. He had been blindfolded his 2nd year on Yeon Og, and been forced to listen to the screams of Slade and Shado as they were tortured to make him give up the location of a rare treasure. It was a traumatic memory, and one she did not want to make him relive if she did not have to.

So, after she got changed into her suit and stretched and warmed up, she called Ben over and spoke to him in as soft and quiet a voice as she possibly could.

“I know what you’re wanting to do, Ben, and I’m ok with it. But Oliver won’t be. He was blindfolded on the island, and what happened after is a painful memory. He needs to train and get better, and he can’t possibly be able to do that if he’s paralyzed by fear. There’s got to be something else, some other way you can do what you need done without that. Isn’t there?”

(Ben Turner’s POV)

That made a ton of sense. He had his own ghosts in the back of his mind, things he did not want to be public knowledge, and he appreciated that Laurel was doing the work of making sure Oliver didn’t have his provoked while also keeping that secret for him as best she could. So, he had to figure out another way.

Then, he saw it. Stepping past what looked like Curtis Holt, who was quite busy shoving food and coffee into himself while reading something from a computer, he dragged a double-end bag and a light-up striking dummy into Oliver’s training area. Laurel had about 6 of those a piece, and he sincerely doubted she’d be harmed by just having 5 now. Then, he grabbed a set of sunglasses that looked like they were blinders.

“Oliver? Meet me at the dummy please?”

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

As he put down his quiver, having fletched half of his arrows and knowing he has to finish fletching the other half, Oliver knew what Ben wanted. It was time for hand-to-hand training. Genuinely, he would always think of himself as an archer who fought and not the other way around. His role models were men like Howard Hill and Saxton T. Pope, not the great martial artists Ben knew and was on a first-name basis with.

But his mission, to save the city he and Laurel loved, could not be fulfilled just with a bow and arrows, no matter how perfect the bow might be. It needed more. It needed him, guided by love and at his absolute best.

So, as he walked towards his teacher, he got himself in the mode of learning and not teaching. Standing in front of the dummy, he bowed to it and then looked confused for a moment as Sensei Turner put a pair of sunglasses on him.

“Sensei?”

(Ben Turner’s POV)

“You need to learn how to strike with precision on an opponent who is coming at you from the sides, from behind you, and from out of your field of view. Furthermore, we need your hand and foot speed to be superior. So, while you practice your forms on this dummy and the double-end bag, I will attack with these sticks. For every blow you cannot defend you will run a mile, Mr. Queen. Am I making myself clear?”

A few hours later….

\--------------------------------------------------

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

She was so proud of Ollie. The drill Ben Turner was running him through was something she had done with Lady Shiva in Indonesia, and she had ended up running 20+ miles because Shiva managed to move like Fred Astaire moved and she could never feel her presence. Even now, 3 years later, her knees ached in sympathy and memory as she practiced her footwork and did her Tiger Claw forms.

She had known, without him having to say, that it was vitally important to him that he keep up with the skills she had developed with Lady Shiva in Indonesia. They both knew that, as a hand-to-hand fighter, Laurel would always be superior. It wasn’t even an insult to him, really, and Laurel knew he understood that. She had been trained, and trained personally, by someone everyone knew was the gold standard for martial arts skill.

Still, though, she knew he wanted to try to meet that standard. It galled him, and kept him up at night from the fearful and strangled screams she heard across the bed from her every night, that he might not always be able to watch her back in the way she deserved. So, knowing him feeling like he was her equal kept him confident and happy, she encouraged him. She also knew that Oliver getting to a place where he could be one of the top 5 unarmed fighters in the world would be good enough for what he could do with a bow, and make it so very few people would want to try him. With that as their shared goal, seeing him do what he had done today filled her with joy.

Finishing up her last set of forms, idly thinking that her inside block setups could use some more work, she drank a post-workout shake from their mini-refrigerator and thought through what she would do next.

There was that Tempest thing, and it kept nagging at her. She suddenly realized how her father had felt all those years as a detective, knowing there was some thread she was missing but not being able to see it.

But that was the big thing, the thing that hung over their heads. She couldn’t just do that all the time. There needed to be something else.

**_That night……._ **

\--------------------------------------------------------------

As the Green Arrow and Black Canary went on patrol, they were keeping themselves busy with low-level gang initiations. Turns out, at least in the Glades, it was common to see that the way one became a member of the Sons of Samoa or whatever Crip chapter was in town was to knock over a greenmarket or local grocery store. But after the 5th store, both of them noticed something off in the corner. A little screen-printed logo on one of the doors.

Realizing the cashier probably spoke better Korean than she spoke English, Laurel prepared to ask her what the logo was but Ollie beat her to it.

“Can you tell me what that logo is on the door? It’s the first time I’ve seen it, and it’s so good I want to find out who made it?” the Green Arrow said in absolutely perfect Korean, to the point that no one who walked in would think that anything was going on except a conversation between two native speakers.

“Oh that? That was something from the Glades Business Improvement District. They wanted us to put it on the store, to scare people off before the big year-end fireworks display” the cashier said, and that sent the honed danger senses of the Green Arrow and the Black Canary.

“Fireworks display? Did they tell you who to contact?” the Black Canary said.

“Yeah. Katherine Kane-Merlyn.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember: Oliver Queen spent 5 years in Korea. So it's entirely plausible that he can speak Korean at a level that sounds like a native speaker.


	14. Blanks

**_At the Queen Consolidated Property on Warner and Galloway……._ **

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

He tried very hard to not remember his time at ARGUS. The man he had to be there, the things he had to ignore and to do, was not something he wanted to talk about with anyone, even Laurel. And that, in and of itself, meant that he knew in his soul it was a bad time because he tried to talk with Laurel about everything. Those dreams he had, almost like he was watching a movie of a person who looked like him but whose actions he no longer recognized, had long ago convinced him that he could keep no secrets from his wife. As he was thinking of it, they were married in all but name and deed, and had been for five years.

But, despite all the trauma from that period of his life, he had learned how to investigate from ARGUS and it was those skills he was looking very much forward to using. Because, and he was pretty sure Laurel shared this sense, there was something off about the “year-end fireworks display” in the Glades. He couldn’t wrap his head around why, because on a surface view, it all made a kind of sense. It was a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving, so it was entirely plausible that someone wanting to get ahead of the game would move to make sure that all the t’s were crossed and the I’s dotted. Furthermore, from what he remembered of the Merlyn family before he had gotten on the boat and his life had gone to absolute hell, them being the sort of people who wanted to make sure that absolutely nothing was left to chance also fit.

Then, why was this all bothering him? He wasn’t quite sure. He’d put a pin in this, and focus on what he knew. And at the moment, what he knew is that he was going to work on the drills and forms Ben Turner had left for him. That would make him better. After those drills were done, he’d figure out all the specialty arrows Curtis had left for him and prepare for what their tech man and communications specialist was calling a “team meeting” by practicing his timing and accuracy with that tennis ball trick Shado had shown him.

He wanted to be useful to the people who were supporting him, to show them that their faith in what he had promised he would become was not misplaced. And he could think of no better way than to do that than to be there for whatever their needs might be.

**_Meanwhile, at Winick Security Consultants in University Hill……._ **

\----------------------------------------------------------

(John Diggle’s POV)

He knew he should be reviewing paperwork, initialing rotation schedules for the security setup for one of those new sheikhs heading into Starling City, but he couldn’t stop thinking about what Quentin had told him.

It worked in his business to make friends with law enforcement agencies. Even if he wasn’t about to be arresting people, having easy access to information on who his principals might be meeting with always meant a fuller idea of whether he would advise the meeting not take place. That, truly, was his job. It didn’t matter if his clients drank like fish, or did drugs. Although god, he wished he could show every single person who snorted coke a picture of his brother Andy, and what his death from drugs had done to their family. But that thought would be just for him. As well as he knew his own name, he knew it just wouldn’t be professional, and he had always kept to the same code.

But he wanted to do good, needed to know he was being more than just an intimidating black man with a Sig Sauer, three tours in Afghanistan, and a natural eye for threats. So, when Quentin explained that a family friend was entering into the vigilante life, and they needed someone to help them with the mundane stuff that wasn’t exciting but was always vital, he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

What would he be? A quartermaster? He did remember seeing guys like that in the ‘Stan. They were useful, and if this Black Canary and Green Arrow duo were who he thought they were, they’d have a lot of needs that only a man with his skill could provide them. This was the work he was supposed to be doing.

So, he knew what he had to do. He slid his papers across his desk, got up, and walked into his boss’s office.

“I Quit.”

**_Meanwhile, back at the Queen Consolidated property on Warner and Galloway………_ **

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Curtis Holt’s POV)

It hadn’t been easy growing up here. His mother had worked 2 jobs, as a secretary and a school bus driver, to put him through school so he could get a full-ride track scholarship. She had sacrificed vacations, and fancy things, to make sure her boy could live his dreams. What’s more, she was ruthless about making sure her checkbook was balanced. In a lot of ways, she had been the reason he became the man he was now.

So, when she called him and told him that she was getting letters about her mortgage not being paid, he didn’t know anything he could possibly feel except for white-hot rage. Someone, somewhere, was running a scam and they had brought his mother into it. Smiling, he realized something. If it was true, and he could find the person responsible, he didn’t have to go to the cops and hope that there was someone there who understood the intricacies of a technological scam. He had two people, people he considered friends, who would hear his story and help him do what needed doing. That’s what justice was, he realized.

Still, though, he wanted to be sure. The idea that this could just be a misprint, just a digit off on a social security number, was small but not so out of the realm of possibility that he could freely dismiss it. But as he looked through the computer information he could find, a trickle of cold went up his neck. He had seen this pattern before. Anyone who had been around computers knew what the work of the Calculator looked like, and this was her signature down to the keystroke.

It wasn’t directly related to whatever this Tempest business was, he knew that. But if the two heroes of the city couldn’t take time out from their hunt to help stop someone who was putting the regular people of the city under an enormous weight, what was the point of this mission?

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Ted Grant had been only too kind to find her a CrossFit box, named Emerald City CrossFit, that was run by an impossibly hard-ass former 49-kg Chinese Olympian. She did not want to contemplate what it said about her that she seemed to gravitate to people who were drill sergeants. But she needed another place like that, another place where physical excellence was paramount. She also, as she was beginning to realize, needed a job.

Oliver, because this was just the kind of person he was, had been only all too happy to support her when they returned from their respective crucibles. She also didn’t want to be too far from him, so she’d always be living at the Queen mansion and that didn’t seem to be too much of a problem for her. But she didn’t want to just live off Oliver’s considerable largesse. She liked knowing she had her own money, her own resources. So that left her with a problem.

She couldn’t be anywhere near practicing law. The kind of trouble she’d get in if it was ever found that she had been being the Black Canary and being an officer of the court at the same time would be biblical. For even more obvious reasons, being a police officer was out.

So, what did that leave? And then, it hit her. She’d work as a trainer at Uncle Ted’s dojo. The money wouldn’t be great at first, and she’d have to become certified to teach taekwondo which meant she’d have to do all her patterns work to become a 5th-dan black belt so she could be called a master and start teaching alongside Uncle Ted. But she could teach people the skills Lady Shiva, and sensei Richard, taught her and make sure that if nothing else, they had the discipline and self-control martial arts gave her.

But for right now, she needed to focus on something else. And, when she saw Oliver doing some skeet-shooting of tennis balls with his compound bow, she could tell he was slowly pulling himself into the Green Arrow personality.

Tonight, they were going out hunting.

**_A few hours later……._ **

\-----------------------------------------------

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

This was cruel. All of this, every ounce and aspect of it, was cruel. As Curtis Holt finished making his presentation, showing all the people whose lives this Calculator woman had ruined, he knew there was no better person to bring to justice. Someone like this, someone who took the dreams of those who had given so much to the city and tried to turn them into ash, needed to taste justice. And he knew they could do that.

The cops of the city might not always be able to help, and sometimes might not even be allowed to, but there would never again be a time when people would have to worry that they would just have to take injustice lying down because no one would help them.

Strapping on his quiver and grabbing his compound bow out of his cashmere-lined case, watching as Laurel got changed into her suit and grabbed her trusty kali sticks from a nearby table, Oliver smiled and he knew what he was about to say next.

“Let’s go hunting”

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Curtis’s mom? How many more mothers like this had there been? How many more people, good and decent people who worked as the blood in the veins of this city keeping it alive and strong, were struggling under the impossible weight of what this Calculator was doing and didn’t have a son like Curtis to figure out what was going on?

How many school bus drivers, railroad drivers, and mill workers had there been? How much had she taken?

No matter. Tonight, there would be no more.

**_That night, at a high-end high-rise apartment building in downtown Starling City……._ **

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Curtis had, rather easily, taken over the security cameras to make sure he could apprise the Green Arrow and Black Canary of any threats that came their way as they went from basement to penthouse, where he knew their main target was. But for right now, all there was in front of them was a seemingly endless wave of private security who appeared to be a combination of people you got from the wanted ads in the paper, ex-Cuban special forces, and some washouts from the State Police. It was a weird mélange, and one that they were having _ABSOLUTELY_ no trouble dealing with.

And while he dealt with people with painful but non-lethal arrow shots, and the blue-belt taekwondo forms Ben Turner had worked so hard on giving him, he couldn’t help but glance at the love of his life dealing with her own opponents.

She moved with an almost sensual grace and agility, more like a tango dancer than an impossibly well-trained martial artist. She wasn’t throwing light parrying blows, either, which made her grace even more impressive. Laurel was hitting like a locomotive with the brakes turned off, and yet somehow managed to remain this velvety smoothness to her work that was captivating. In this moment, and it gave him a chuckle to think of it, he wanted to take her out dancing to see if that grace still worked on a dance floor with some smooth jazz, and a nice meal after.

Hell, he thought as he fired a bola arrow into the floor and smiled as the ropes flew out and tied 3 people to the wall, he could do that at the mansion.

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Oliver didn’t move like a martial artist, although he was getting there more and more all the time. Instead, he moved like someone who shot arrows for a living and was really annoyed you were forcing him to use his hands instead of a bow.

So, because he was particularly annoyed, he hit with the force of a man who just wanted to be done with this. He wasn’t going to kill anyone, she knew. Neither one of them were. But if someone happened to wake up with a concussion, or a busted nose and orbital bone, maybe it’d make them rethink the profitability of being in this life.

And then to watch him fire a bow, she could see the grace and power in it. She saw how he grabbed an arrow from a quiver, nocked it, aimed, and fired as easily as she threw a high kick.

Finally, they made it to the top floor. With a inside block of a terribly sloppy punch and then a ridge-hand to counter, they were at the Calculator’s door.

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Grabbing two arrows out of his quiver, Oliver walked in the front door and nocked the arrow towards the computer and smirked as a horrified Calculator tried to grab the arrow only to see the broadhead turn into a flash drive and end up in her computer. With the second arrow, he fired a cable that locked her in her chair.

“Felicity Megan Smoak, you have failed this city. Any last words before the Secret Service shows up?”

“The Phantom and the Dark Archer will get you for this. You won’t survive.”

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

“Let them come. This city deserves protectors. It deserves champions. We will make sure it has them.”


	15. Fade to Black

**_At the Federal Detention Center near Chuck Knox International Airport_** ……

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(Katherine Kane-Merlyn’s POV)

Well, THIS was not how she wanted to be spending her night. But and this part was equally as frustrating, there was really no way around it. None.

Apparently, and this part was deeply frustrating, someone had used their names. Not their actual names, because those were easy to find and helped keep up the lie that they were business tycoons of the 1st order. But, their OTHER names. The things they used, and the people they were, when those who truly made the city-run got out of line.

What they were, of a sort at least, were two living market corrections. If the people who made sure that this city MATTERED got any bright ideas about delivering some of their wealth to those less fortunate, those who would never be more than chattel, they got visited by two merciless reminders of how things needed to stay.

Somehow, this Felicity Megan Smoak had gotten that information and used it, as a child would, to threaten this Green Arrow and Black Canary with their presence. What was most galling about that, from what their tech people had told them from the footage that was found and brought to their attention, was the response of those two children. How dare they? The Glades was going to be rebuilt in blood and fire. No one could stop them.

And anyone who thought they could, especially some archer and his sidekick, were going to have it made crystal-clear to them what they should have known already: The city didn’t need to be saved, and it couldn’t be.

So, as she dropped down into Ms. Smoak’s cell, Katherine Kane-Merlyn ceased to be. In her place was the Phantom, and she was pissed. Nocking a red-and-black-fletched arrow, thanking god that the Brothers in Silk had allowed her to master walking without making a sound, she waited until her target turned around and fired a perfect shot right through her throat.

That’d serve her right.

**_Meanwhile, back at the Queen Mansion………_ **

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

The plans he had to save the city, the plans he had to be the man Laurel and everyone who lived here deserved, seemed to be coming up against their first real obstacle. But he wasn’t worried. He had survived 5 years of hellish combat against things, and people, who far outstripped whatever this Phantom or Dark Archer might be able to do. So, when he faced these two people who were apparently the enforcers for the city’s elite criminal underworld, he would not bow before them like Ms. Smoak’s words indicated he should.

In fact, he hadn’t given them a 2nd thought until right then. What was, however, at the forefront of his mind was Tempest. There were still things he was questioning, holes left in his understanding of what this group was. Furthermore, there was still that fireworks display thing. Something about it still hit him as wrong, even if he couldn’t necessarily put a finger on what it was.

So, when he didn’t know what to do, he decided to put together a war council. In all his studies of the great archers throughout history, the men whose souls he could feel guiding his bow, the concept of the war council had always stuck with him. These were people, trained in all manner of combat skills, who were brought together to deal with and solve problems when matters of great importance needed to be decided. And finding out just what Tempest was, and how deep their tentacles dug in the society of Starling City, seemed to him to be a matter of great importance.

But before he convened his commission, he needed more information. And, he realized for the first time since coming back, he couldn’t get that information as an emerald-colored bringer of justice. To find out what he needed to know; the Green Arrow would need to be Oliver Queen.

He needed to see the Merlyns.

**_Meanwhile, at the executive suites of Merlyn Global Group……._ **

\---------------------------------------------------------

(Malcolm Merlyn’s POV)

Malcolm Merlyn had been justly proud of his family name. His grandfather, and his father, had built their small family’s watch repair business in the Glades into a multi-national conglomerate with their hands in defense, technology, and the bleeding edge of science spending. He was the head of a multi-national colossus, but right now, he was furious because his name had been repudiated.

Not the one on the cover of BusinessWeek. That, he had long since given up on. People were free, although it galled him, to state that one of his business rival’s products were better. But what bothered him, what he simply could not countenance, was the idea that someone would know of his reputation and dismiss it.

He had, multiple times over, **EARNED** the right to be thought of as someone not to be trifled with. And to think now that some young punk and his sidekick, some kid who didn’t yet know how the world truly worked, had the temerity to dismiss that which he had worked so hard to become was infuriating in a way he couldn’t put words to.

The time, then, had come. An insult like this could not pass. Glancing towards his secret room, locked by a bio-metric handprint lock and a retina scan, Malcolm Merlyn prepared himself to go out hunting.

After all, his name was his name, the most important thing his father and grandfather had left him. To think anyone could simply be allowed to discredit it was a fool’s errand.

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

He knew that what he wanted, what he needed to finally begin to work on getting the pollution out of the bloodstream of his city, would require finesse and a certain understated charm. He couldn’t be the flirty Casanova he had been before the island. For one, Laurel had his heart so completely that flirting with any other woman, no matter how gorgeous she might be, felt wrong and sad. For the other, he had long got the sense that Katherine Kane-Merlyn’s attention was not on his gender in the slightest.

But, still, he needed to look the part. So, he got himself a three-piece hand-made suit that would not look out of place in a Savile Row window and made an appointment. Waiting in the lobby, he could admit to himself how uncomfortable he was in this suit. While he was the heir to a vast fortune, and he knew his wealth could do worlds of good for his city, he had never felt as uncomfortable with the trappings of it as he did right now. He could look outside the lobby of this place, or go 10 blocks northwest to the Glades, and know just how many people were suffering while he got the chance to eat at the finest restaurants and live the high life.

And as he walked into Katherine Kane-Merlyn’s office, whistling as he noticed how impeccably organized it all was, he realized it was time to put on the LT and see if he couldn’t get some answers.

(Katherine Kane-Merlyn’s POV)

Well, this was unexpected. The returning prodigal son, Oliver Queen, was in her office. It struck her as funny, to be honest, the degree to which this city loved a man who was not that impressive from what she could see. She had cultivated her life, ever since her true father Malcolm came into her life, to make sure that no one loved her outside of him. When it came to everyone else, she wanted to be feared, respected, and admired but never loved. She had seen, from the way Malcolm raged on the anniversary of his wife’s death, what love could cost you and she never wanted to have that pain for herself.

So, despite her general distaste for such things, she put on a fake smile and sat down with a business rival, and someone she had a personal distaste for.

“Mr. Queen. What do I owe the pleasure?”

“I was discussing our year-end plans with some family friends, and it came up that there was going to be a fireworks display in the Glades put together by Merlyn Global Group. I was wondering if Queen Consolidated could make it a dual production, if you still have time for that sort of thing” this boy was saying, a hint of a smile on his face that she was not sure it was because that was just how he carried himself or if he was trying to sniff something out. Either way, best to cut it off here.

“Mr. Queen, the year-end fireworks display has already been organized. All of the ordinances have been bought and paid for, and we simply can’t have any other company contribute at this time. Furthermore, Merlyn Global Group is merely the organizers. It’s a collection of business leaders who are putting together the money. Now, if you won’t mind, I have several business meetings today.”

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

He knew when he was being dismissed, and rather than force the issue, he would take his leave.

“Thank you, Ms. Merlyn. I hope we get to see more of each other.”

Walking out, Oliver grabs his iPhone from off the desk and heads back home. Tonight, he realized, was a holiday party. He couldn’t be Oliver Queen and not make a command appearance at a party.

Even if he was growing more and more personally uncomfortable with the idea of wearing it, the mask still had its benefits.

**_Meanwhile, at Wildcat Kickboxing and Muay Thai……._ **

\----------------------------------------------------------------------

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Oliver had talked with her in the morning, over three-egg omelets stuffed full of sambal-seasoned onions and peppers and a pot of disturbingly good fair-trade coffee, so he knew what he was up to this morning. Meanwhile, she was working on all the 5th-dan taekwondo patterns that she could remember because she knew she needed to be tested to get her black belt and join Uncle Ted in being a master. She knew that being a 1st-to-3rd-dan was good enough, but Uncle Ted had explained that he had built up the reputation of this gym as providing a certain class of instruction. Having people in it who would merely be classified as instructors by every major governing body of taekwondo would harm that reputation, and he was not about to let that happen if she could do something to stop it.

As she thought of it, though, being a taekwondo instructor would also be a great way to keep her ear to the city’s problems. For as long as there would be troubles in this city, and she got the sense that there always would be, she and Oliver would stand with those in the city who would fight against it. She just hoped, in her heart and soul, that there would be more by their side when they did than there was now.

Something about Tempest, about the sheer mass of information Curtis had said was on that flash drive, made her think that the tentacles of this reached far deeper and were a lot stronger than both her and Oliver previously believed to be the case.

But she could beat them. She had come too far, given up too much of that scared and weepy young girl that she had once been on the docks in Starling, to think of herself as someone who would back down from a fight. Going after Tempest, when she could figure out what it was, didn’t scare her. She had spent 5 years being trained to fight by the best unarmed combatants anyone had heard of, and she had become Lady Shiva’s favorite student. Some rich people with delusions of megalomania? Why should she be worried about any of them?

But out of the corner of her eye, she saw someone in this dojo, someone she never expected to be here.

“Dad?”

**_A few minutes later, at a nearby coffee shop……._ **

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(Detective 1st Grade Quentin Lance’s POV)

There were things about Starling City that weren’t bad. Not many, of course, and he was guessing that if his baby girl felt a responsibility to become a vigilante, he was about to figure out just how bad it was. But, and this was key to his own peace of mind at this point, you could go anywhere in the city and get a truly excellent cup of joe.

He had never truly understood why this was, but it was a balm now. Because, across the table from him, was his daughter who he was equal parts proud of, and utterly infuriated with.

Proud because she had shown the same burning need to see justice done that had guided him to become a detective 1st grade, and infuriated because she could have just stayed a lawyer and done it the right way instead of putting on an outfit and going out being her own personal judge and jury. (He knew, with the clarity that anger can sometimes bring, that Laurel would never kill. She knew what it meant, through his example.)

“So, when were you going to tell me?” he asked, and god he hated knowing that she would lie to him. Even worse, he knew why and the knowledge that it was the only prudent play she had burned like acid in his chest. But knew it he did, so her answer did not surprise him.

“I started learning martial arts during that spiritual retreat in Indonesia. They said that it would give me discipline and self-control to keep myself centered, and it has. I’ve become really good at it, so Uncle Ted decided to let me train at his gym.”

“No, I know you’re good at that” Quentin said, and he sighed deeply because he knew what he was about to do might drive a wedge between his daughter and he that he could never fix.

(Author’s Note: This conversation takes place in Chinese.)

“No, Laurel, I mean about the OTHER thing. I heard you talking about going out hunting, as the Black Canary. Have you **_LOST YOUR MIND_**?”

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

She should have guessed he would figure it out. But she wouldn’t stop, couldn’t stop. No matter what happened, she could not make herself give up. She was one of the pair of heroes the city needed, and to give up on that just because her father feared what **MIGHT** happen to her filled her with anger.

“No, dad, I haven’t. Look around this city. Can you tell me, honestly, that it doesn’t need what I can do, what I’ve **_BEEN_** doing? Even you, as brilliant and noble as you are, can’t honestly tell me this city doesn’t need people like me? The Green Arrow and I are trying to save the city, just like you are. So, please tell me why I shouldn’t live up to the standard you set for me”

(Detective 1st Grade Quentin Lance’s POV)

“I’m not telling you to stop, Laurel. You’re my child, and I’m proud of you for deciding to make sure the people of this city have justice, even if I don’t love how you are going about it. I don’t think you’re thinking any of this through, though, and that is what worries me. What happens when people start to see you, and the Green Arrow, as targets? This isn’t a kung-fu movie, Laurel, this is real life. You’re going to start making powerful enemies if you keep this up, and I don’t care how good you are, someday you’ll find an opponent you can’t beat.

I just don’t want you to get hurt”

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

And that, she could understand. But still, she had to try.

“I have to do this. No matter what. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t try to do the right thing. And, as much as I know my own name, I know this is the right thing”

Nodding his head, she knew the matter was now closed. But as she sipped from her coffee, the iPhone in her pocket vibrated and she glanced down at it before noticing that her father was doing the same. Glancing at their phones in unison, Laurel sighed before calling herself an Uber to the Queen Mansion and Quentin left to pay their bill.

Apparently, her father was about right. Someone had decided that the Green Arrow, and Black Canary, were targeted. And just to make sure their targets peeked their heads out, hostages had been taken. This Phantom and Dark Archer were going to PAY for this. 

**_In the interim, at the Quiver….._ **

\-------------------------------------------

(Curtis Holt’s POV)

There were times, and this turned out to be one of them when Curtis Holt sincerely wished he had not decided to take a double major in engineering and computer science at Cal-Berkeley. Because at this precise moment, what he had found would break his friends. The Tempest file was a 400-terabyte bear that had taken his finest mining software days to run through. But finally, he had gotten through it all. And the information at the end of all that filtering was going to change the way Oliver and Laurel saw the city, and how deeply connected and powerful their enemies truly were.

For one, whoever was behind Tempest had the police officers of the city under their thumb with a few exceptions, thankfully Laurel’s father being one of them. Still, though, when she heard about how many of the men her father had been partnered with were working to destroy the city…. He did not want to be anywhere near her when she found it out.

But for Oliver, it would be worse. He had cultivated nearly unimpeachable evidence that Moira Queen had been helping to bankroll Tempest’s activities, including something dark and brutal-seeming called the Undertaking that was intended to be going off at the end of the year.

He had to tell them. But before he could, he felt his iPhone vibrate and glanced up to see that someone had taken hostages at an abandoned warehouse in the Waterfront district, and were challenging the Green Arrow and Black Canary to show up. He had to tell Oliver.

**_Meanwhile, at the Queen Mansion……._ **

\-------------------------------------------------------

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

He had long understood, and his past life on the island and Ben Turner’s careful tutelage had only helped with this, the value of finding an opponent and challenging them. And if that had been where this ended, if all it had been was whoever was under the hoods of the Phantom and Dark Archer wanting a challenge, he would have respected it. But to do what they were doing? Taking hostages? That would not be allowed to stand.

So, with a nearly imperceptible nod to his mom, Oliver snuck out the back door of his mansion and grabbed his gear bag and the keys to his bike where he knew Laurel was waiting. If the Phantom and the Dark Archer wanted to see the Green Arrow and the Black Canary, they would.

Calling Curtis both to get a location and to get him to have Ben Turner drop Laurel’s gear bag somewhere close by, Oliver was supremely confident.

They had beaten back every challenge before them, every rich billionaire who stood in their way. This was about to be no different.

**_At an abandoned warehouse near the ports……._ **

\-------------------------------------------------------------------

And so, after showing up and making sure all the hostages had left, the Green Arrow fired a cable arrow into the middle of the warehouse floor which both he and the Black Canary slid down on. Holstering his compound bow Oliver sees a flash of white light and immediately rolls to a side, pulling Laurel with him as a flashbang explodes loud enough to disorient them both as the Phantom appears from the shadows and lands a drug-laden but not lethal flechette in the thigh of the Black Canary.

“That’s a poison dart loaded with ketamine, Rohypnol, and GHB. Leave now, birdie. Otherwise, you won’t be able to fight back at all” the Phantom smirks, as she gets into a classic Eagle Claw stance as she watches the Black Canary sway and attempt to get into a fighting stance of her own. Still, Laurel tried. As her vision blurred, and merely seeing her opponent in front of her became harder and harder, she still threw the strikes she could instinctually remember. But all of them, every last one, was thrown too short and too soft to do any real damage. Finally, the Black Canary slumped to the floor, done.

Oliver wanted to help, he really did. But as he pulled out his compound bow and nocked a cable arrow towards the Phantom, he heard the sound of an arrow and then suddenly felt a broadhead go through his shoulder before what he could tell was the Dark Archer dropped to the floor and Oliver tried to fight him the best he could only to discover he was dealing with a master.

Soon, he was overwhelmed and then hit with another arrow that knocked his quiver and compound bow harmlessly to the floor. Picking up the bow and quiver, the Dark Archer smiles as the Green Arrow crawls to pull himself up.

“Interesting choice. High-quality compound bow and high-quality arrows. But you are done being a hero for the people of this city, so you won’t be needing this” and the Dark Archer breaks the bow and the arrows, before cutting the quiver in twain.

“Sorry. In the end, you just weren’t strong enough” the Phantom and the Dark Archer say in unison, before leaving the Green Arrow and Black Canary in the warehouse, alone.

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

It was getting very dark, and very cold. He didn’t have much energy left. But he needed to get them home and safe.

“Curtis? Help.”


	16. Starting To See Light

**_At the Quiver……._ **

\--------------------------------------------

(Dr. Eliza Schwartz’s POV)

She had heard about it on the news. The Green Arrow and Black Canary had went to a warehouse in the ports to rescue hostages and fight the hostage takers, and then a panicked and near-tears Curtis Holt called her. From what she had been able to piece together in between the sobs and inarticulate screams of rage, the two heroes of the city had suffered a great loss when they had tried to do the right thing.

She could remember how she had been recruited to their side. It was the night of a long day, because ever since announcing she wanted to go into private practice, it seemed like all she ever did was paperwork and family medicine. Starling City seemed to be rife with gunshot wounds, and the sort of trauma that you usually found in forward military hospitals, and yet the two main hospitals in the city seemed to be perpetually under-resourced almost as a matter of routine. There were never enough beds, and never enough nurses or trained doctors. She could feel there was something wrong.

But, until that night, she couldn’t have put voice to it if she had wanted to. But when three guys in hoodies and skull masks showed up outside her doctor’s office, demanding money she didn’t have and drugs she couldn’t give out, she finally knew what it was. Starling City had become a gangster’s paradise, and people like her were going to be driven out of it or killed.

And then, two people came to her aid. She was not a fool. She had heard rumors of an archer and a martial artist trying to save the city from harm and destruction, but that’s what she believed them to be: rumors. Ghosts, the sort of things parents in this city had to make up to make sure they still believed this was a place you could raise a family.

But now she saw them, and she thanked God those rumors were truth. Because the Green Arrow and Black Canary had saved her with just a glance and a momentary flash of a bow.

Now, though, they needed to be saved. She knew there would be a high chance of puncture wounds, and stitches for cuts and broken bones if what she had been able to figure out was true.

And as she got to work, trying to fix the wounds of the city’s true protectors, she knew she was only beginning to pay one cent of all the debts that the city had long since owed to the Green Arrow and the Black Canary. She didn’t even need to look under their masks. Their names, who they were and what they did off the clock, were something she would never tell a soul.

Thinking about it, the weight of what they were doing, the decisions they had to make every day, must be massive. If she could patch their wounds up before they kept going, and make sure they didn’t injure themselves so badly they couldn’t be what the city needed them to be, it was the least she could do. 

Meanwhile, in Central City…..

\-----------------------------------------------

(Barry Allen’s POV)

It had dawned on Barry in the last day that he had never actually had to deal with Malcolm Merlyn. All he knew of him was occasional meetings, and the sheer hatred in Oliver’s voice whenever the man’s name was mentioned. But, as the news traveled about what the Dark Archer and the Phantom had done to the heroes of Starling City, he was somewhat begrudgingly willing to admit that he was glad he hadn’t. Because, if he hadn’t screwed up the past so much that someone else was underneath that black hood, Merlyn and his partner wiping the floor with Oliver and Laurel was an unwelcome development.

He admitted to being relatively selfish on this. In some time, a time he hoped was farther away than it had been in the timeline he remembered, there would be a crisis that required every hero from across the earth to stand and fight. And the last time that had happened, the man who could have led them through it was in no way ready to be a leader. He didn’t blame Oliver for that. The Green Arrow who had shown up for that crisis had lost so much over those 7 years before it happened that he no longer had the desire to guide himself and his friends through one more grand battle. The body was willing, and always would be, but the spirit was no longer able.

Now, though, there was a chance that they would be ready for it. So, he was rooting for Oliver and Laurel to get it done, to beat the Dark Archer and Phantom and continue down the path to become the heroes and champions for good and justice that they were always intended to be.

But, he realized with sadness, rooting was all he was going to be able to do for the moment. His own city was doing a truly tremendous job of keeping him busy. Rathaway, and his hired rogues, were becoming a true pain. Somehow, and he guessed this was with some help from STAR Labs who didn’t share the same scruples as Mercury Labs, Rathaway had gotten a complete workup on how to deal with his speed and made his weapons even stronger. Besides that, Thawne was still lurking and looming. It had been odd, but in the past few days, it was almost like he could smell him in the same way a diabetic could tell by smell when their blood sugar was off.

And then, there was the unique set of problems his girlfriend brought with her. It dizzied him to believe it, but somehow, he had been dating Kara Danvers. It started small, just a friendly coffee when she appeared in Central City at Jitters. She was so light, so free of any of the doubt that she had in the last timeline, that he found himself constantly wanting to be around her. Soon, she found out his secret and shared hers. (Her powers running by sunshine and living in a city on the coast where it was always sunny and never seemed to snow was a perfect coincidence they didn’t question.) Soon, Cisco designed them suits and they started fighting crime together. Until her aunt and uncle showed up. He could just tell, from experience he wished he never had, that whatever this Myriad business was, it wasn’t going to end well.

He had enough on his plate without popping over to Starling City. And as much as it hurt, he knew Oliver and Laurel had to be able to do this on their own. Their victory wouldn’t mean as much as it needed to if they got help from the Fastest Man Alive.

**_Back in the Quiver….._ **

\----------------------------------------

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Everything hurt. Not just his shoulder where an arrowhead had been carefully pulled out, or even his broken nose or split lip, but genuinely…. **Everything**.

Over the 5 years he had spent on that island, 5 years being dipped in pain like Achilles had been dipped in the River Styx, he could not think of a time when he hurt as much as he did right now. It wasn’t just the physical pain, although that was heavy and intense. It was that when he had been called upon to do it, he could not protect Laurel or his city.

He had failed her, and failed every person who looked at the Green Arrow and saw someone who could be strong enough to stand up for them. He had tried to fight for his city, and for his love, and as the Dark Archer had told him, he simply wasn’t strong enough. The Green Arrow had become something, something that mattered to the people of Starling City. And in one night, in one duel against a superior archer and fighter, that symbol had been damaged. He doubted he’d ever forget knowing how easily he had been beaten, how arrogant he had been before it all happened.

And what’s worse, he didn’t even know if he could even still BE the Green Arrow. From what he could remember before he faded in and out of unconsciousness, his bow and arrows had been broken. The bow Shado had gifted him, lovingly like a sister buying her little brother a Christmas present, was now in tatters in a glass case somewhere in the Quiver. The arrows and quiver Slade had walked him through creating were gone too, and it almost made him cry because those were both the strongest and last memories he had of them. He, for the first time since he returned from the island, thought about stopping his father’s quest.

But as he pulled himself up to his feet, he glanced over to his left where Laurel was lying on a bed and knew why he couldn’t. It would have been like losing a limb to watch her every night go out and try and protect the city, without him. They would learn from this, because they needed to.

But the day would come when they battled the Dark Archer and the Phantom again, because there would never be a time when the Green Arrow and the Black Canary would not be battling on behalf of the soul of Starling City.

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Why had she been so stubborn, so confident that there was no enemy who could challenge her? Right now, as she looked at her cut-apart suit and the wound in her thigh, she realized that her stubbornness had cost her everything. She had not believed anyone could beat her, so she had not prepared for the possibility. More so, she hadn’t bothered to find out if the Phantom or Dark Archer had created a pattern that could be studied. In all the ways that mattered, her stubbornness and refusal to imagine that someone could be better than her had gotten her and Oliver to this place, where they were being patched up and forced to rebuild.

But her mind wasn’t on her own troubles. It was on Oliver’s. He had suffered so much pain and trauma during those 5 years away, and it had been a miracle he had returned to her not more damaged than he already was. So to imagine that he had to suffer through something like being unable to defeat the first true challenge to the completion of his father’s deathbed request was not something she wanted to be doing. If she could get him through this dark period, and she would have to be strong for him as he rebuilt his confidence one shot and one blow at a time, they could do what they had sworn to do: Save their city.

Because now they knew where to focus their attention: On Tempest.

Laurel didn’t think any of this had been an accident. They were investigating, albeit quietly and under the radar, Tempest. And then, the Phantom and the Dark Archer had shown up. That threat she had made to that Felicity Smoak woman probably hadn’t helped.

Still, though, they had responsibilities. Things they had to do and be, and this defeat would not, COULD NOT, stop that.

(Curtis Holt’s POV)

Oliver was up now and moving, even though less than 12 hours ago he had fought a master archer and hand-to-hand fighter and lost badly. His will, his desire to see justice done, was remarkable. And for all the great things he had built as a private citizen, Curtis could freely admit to himself that to be in the presence of will like this was a true honor. He also knew that he could never get there, could never make himself be THAT strong.

But, and this hurt him to even contemplate, what would knowing what role his mother played in Tempest do to that will? And what was this Undertaking? All he could see was….. OH GOD.

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

All of a sudden, she saw Curtis Holt run from his computer like he was an Olympian again and grab a bucket before violently retching into it. Rushing over, and then ambling when her thigh suddenly twinged like someone playing a blues solo on an electric guitar, she looked into his eyes when he was done and saw fear, guilt, and disgust waging a war in his eyes.

“I know what they’re up to. Get Oliver, and Ben, and Ted. I don’t want to say this more than once, and we’re going to need everyone.”

Sighing, the Black Canary made those phone calls and made one to her father as well.

“Dad? That note you left for me about that guy who could help us? Have him meet us at the abandoned warehouse on Warner and Galloway. We need him now, and you too honestly.”

**_A few hours later……._ **

\-------------------------------------------------

(John Diggle’s POV)

When he had been told he would be a quartermaster for two young vigilantes, Master Sergeant John Diggle had called on some of his old service buddies to figure out what a land-based quartermaster did and how to do it better. Armed with that information, he walked into this warehouse fully prepared to refine it to what he knew these kids would need. And make no mistake, these were kids who wanted to become men and women fighting for justice. If they needed a quartermaster, someone who made sure they had enough of the supplies they needed to be the heroes they wanted to be, he would gladly do that work. It would be something he would enjoy being, something that allowed him to be of service to something bigger than himself again.

But then, as he was home making his poor attempt at shakshuka for Lyla on a date night, he saw the news on tv and saw the Black Canary and Green Arrow’s broken and battered bodies on TV as the Phantom and Dark Archer simply walked out of a warehouse in the ports and left them there. In that moment, as Lyla’s mouth lay wide open, he knew what the other part of his mission was going to be while the disgusted news anchor was still talking.

These were kids. And he needed to make sure they were around as many strong people as they could be.

Sure, he could make sure they had enough arrows and weapons. But more than that, they needed someone who had been there. And looking at the two men in the back corner, men he could just tell had been through their own battles, they all made a solemn vow. They would help these kids with what they were doing.

(Curtis Holt’s POV)

So, as he drank some Gatorade to rinse that taste out of his mouth, he turned around to finish prepping his presentation and noticed that there were more people there than he had originally planned on.

No matter, though. His friends needed to be aware of what he had discovered, and if that meant that all these people here could help them stop it before this Undertaking thing happened, that would be all the better.

So, with a deep sigh and more confidence than he actually felt, Curtis decided to explain things.

“This is Tempest. Near as I have been able to discover, they are the people behind what’s been going on in our city. All of the crime no one’s been able to really stop, all of the corruption and greed, is because they’ve had their fingers on the scale for decades. Every time any of the heroes in this room, and yes I’m including you Detective Lance, has gotten close to really stopping the bleeding they were either distracted from it, or pushed on to less-interesting work.

It appears that whatever they have been doing before, they grew bored by it and have decided to do something else. Because now, they have apparently made the decision to surgically excise the Glades from the map.

These people, whoever they are, have made the decision that the Glades is a cancer and they are determined to cut it out. That fireworks display you talked to Katherine Kane-Merlyn about? It’s a front. They’re planning on using IED’s planted at precise places to sink the Glades into the ocean, to destroy it. They don’t care how many people die, because the people behind the Undertaking don’t see anyone who lives in the Glades as a person.

The Phantom and the Dark Archer clearly act as their enforcers, the people who make sure that anyone who does decide to back out of this devil’s bargain does not live to do so.

What’s more, and what’s sadder, is I have been able to find out that the pollution Tempest represents has been promoted, and protected, by some of the true leading lights of our city.

Detective Lance, men you have served alongside, men like Frank Pike and Lucas Hilton, are members of Tempest. They have ensured, both through words and deeds, that any police officer who got too close to the true criminals of this city were blocked from advancement, transferred out, or murdered. I would suggest you keep what you know, what you have learned here, under your hat.

Oliver, your mother has written checks to Tempest-funded organizations since the Queen’s Gambit sunk off of the coast of the Korean peninsula. I don’t know if she just didn’t know, or if they have something on her that is forcing her to. But you need to ask, because everyone in this room needs to know.

Right now, we’re all agreed that Tempest is a problem. This Undertaking is a problem. But by deciding to stop it, we’ve also agreed that there’s a chance that some of the people in this room will not survive the battle. Does anyone have any objections?”

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

How deep did it all run? How much of his city, the city he had sworn to love and protect until there was no more breath in him, had been polluted before he came home?

It doesn’t matter. If battling the Dark Archer and the Phantom had taught him anything, it was that he needed to always fight, needed to always learn and improve.

“We can’t go at this right away. We need to cover our tracks, and we need to know how deep this goes. Right now, the only people in this city who know about Tempest are us. We do what we’ve always been doing, helping those who can’t help themselves. Because when we get close to this, when we can finally break it down, the Phantom and the Dark Archer will be coming looking for us again. And this city deserves us to be ready for them.

But make no mistake, come hell or high water, we will destroy Tempest.”


	17. Awakenings

**_At Table Salt……_ **

\--------------------------------------

(Malcolm Merlyn’s POV)

To the extent it could be said that he enjoyed anything, Malcolm Merlyn loved being rich. It wasn’t just having fancy cars that cost more than some people’s homes, or being able to have immediate reservations in fancy restaurants like this while others ate at that damnable Big Belly Burger. Those were good benefits, sure, but at the moment he could think of nothing more that he enjoyed about being rich was the resources it provided him. Ever since he had defeated the Green Arrow and Black Canary, he had thought of that moment as an awakening for them. He smiled as he noted that they had stayed in the Glades, at least according to his well-paid whisper network.

He would let them, then. The Undertaking was months away, after all, and Robin Hood and a little bird were in no way threats to what he was planning. And if he was wrong, if they were trying to become more than the jumped-up beat cops they currently were, he had contingencies for that plan. The city needed to be cleansed from the filth it was choking on, and then it could be rebuilt as somewhere where only the best and brightest called home. No homeless, no working poor or middle class. Just people who mattered.

It would be his dream, and he would know he had properly avenged what the Glades had done to Rebecca Merlyn.

So, let them try. They had already shown they could not win.

**_Meanwhile, at Wildcat Kickboxing and Muay Thai in the Glades…._ **

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(Laurel Lance’s POV)

When she had been bestowed the name of the Black Canary by Lady Shiva in a ceremony that was far more sacred, and important to her personally, than she might have thought it to be at first, Dinah Laurel Lance had not shown a particular interest in fighting off pickpockets, muggers, and the “little fish” in the Starling City criminal ocean. Truth be told, she hadn’t thought of herself as learning martial arts for the purposes of fighting for her city particularly. She did that in her day job as a lawyer, but her martial arts skills were just for her she thought. All she had wanted to be, and all that she still wanted to be, was the woman Oliver Queen needed. She knew that wasn’t the most enlightened stance to be taking. But she didn’t care. She loved him with her whole heart, and would until there was no more breath left in her. 

And then Ollie told her about his plans, and she decided to join him and save their city together. But now, a little bit at a time, they were realizing what the task they had sworn to complete would require of them, and how much they would have to change in order to see it done. For all the pain it had caused them, the Phantom and the Dark Archer had made utterly sure that point was clear. They had shown them what biting off more than you could chew would feel like.

And so here they were. A little collection of men and women deciding that their city needed to live up to its grand potential, and had the will to do something about it. Tempest was a big, overarching, bear of a thing. But she knew that they could beat it. More than that, she knew they had to try.

In that spirit, she was worried about Ollie. He hadn’t been out for patrols in a few days, and it was starting to make her concerned. Sure, he had said that he had been working with Curtis to make a new compound bow, arrows, and a new 60-arrow quiver. And she also didn’t want to push him faster than he would be comfortable with.

But she needed him. Being out in the city, without him, felt wrong in a way she couldn’t put voice to. This mission, that they had become equal partners on, didn’t feel as fulfilling, or right, without him.

Still, though, she wouldn’t push. She’d train here, and be confident in the fact that when Oliver was ready, they would be partners again.

None of this, not one bit, worked without the Green Arrow and the Black Canary together.

(Ted Grant’s POV)

It had taken a few days, and more Modelos than he might be comfortable with admitting he drank, to wrap his head around this whole thing.

For years, decades he was getting the sense, there had been a grand conspiracy undergirding everything in the city he loved. And to know that it was his niece and her boyfriend who had uncovered it, almost entirely on accident, was something he felt tremendous pride in. They were going to beat this thing.

Saying that out loud, even inside the confines of his own mind, felt like a promise. And as he thought about it, he realized it was. But that was ok. He was good with promises. After all, he had made a lot of them.

He had made promises to his girls Yolanda and Valentia when they were born to be there for them, to be the father they needed in their lives. He had made the same promise to his wife Salma to be the same thing, and to give up fighting in the streets.

He did not want for her the life of so many heroes’ spouses, wondering if this battle against this enemy would be the time their love did not return to them. He could not do that to her.

But this, helping people save the city he loved? He could do that, and do it easily.

Meanwhile, at the Queen Mansion……

\-----------------------------------------------

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Right now, Oliver Queen wished he was holding a fort against an army of highly-trained Yakuza assassins. Or maybe he could be sparring all day with Ben, working on nothing but hand techniques until it felt like both of his arms were just going to separate at the rotator cuffs and just fall right off.

Because doing what he was about to be doing, namely having to figure out how to have enough bass in his voice to question his mother on something, made all those other things he could be doing far less unpalatable than they would be under normal circumstances.

But he realized with equal annoyance, he couldn’t just… not ask. There were too many balls in the air, too many things that would have to be done or undone based on the answer to this question, that necessitated them somehow not knowing what his mother knew. If she truly didn’t know, that would be one thing. They could show her the horror of what she was unwillingly funding, and he knew in his bones that she would not support that.

But if she did know, if she approved? Then up would become down, right would become wrong, and the sun might as well be blue.

So, as he grabbed breakfast and sat down in front of his mother who was initialing paperwork and checking her e-mail, he figured it would be best to just pull the Band-Aid off and ask.

“Mom? What do you know about Tempest?”

“Who’s asking? Oliver Queen or the Green Arrow?”

(Moira Queen’s POV)

As soon as he asked about Tempest, she knew what he wanted. It had given her some misgivings, too, to be honest. But she could feel patience with her son, time to explain how she had been told too late in the game what it was and how desperately she wanted to get out. That was the benefit of family, especially hers: They would listen, and offer help. Because if her money could be somehow removed from the Tempest coffers, with the Merlyn’s being none the wiser, then all the leverage would be gone.

The Green Arrow, though, had never struck her as being particularly patient. She supposed he couldn’t afford to be, considering most of the people he interrogated were either holding a gun on him or about to be taken to federal prison. So, if the Green Arrow was asking, she’d need to spill everything.

“I didn’t know what Tempest was. It was a Business Improvement District meeting, and honestly, I felt myself falling asleep. Then Malcolm Merlyn and Katherine Kane-Merlyn started talking about how everything we were doing, and talking about doing, really wasn’t going to revitalize the city like it deserved. What the city needed, he explained, was something like a storm that blew away the old ways of thinking and being.

You must understand, Malcolm is an uncommonly gifted speaker. Everything about him, everything he says and does, gives you the sense that he’s truly got your best interests at heart. So, all of us, everyone from Ted Kord to Simon Stagg, put our money in what he said would be the start of a new era in Starling City. I don’t know if they knew what he was up to. I can’t speak for them.

But one day, we had a meeting and I arrived early. He was talking to Katherine about how the city was going to be so much better once the Glades was gone, and how he would have finally avenged Rebecca by destroying the thing that killed her. Not the person who killed her, Oliver. That I could have understood.

But a whole neighborhood, filled with innocent people who had no part in that? I couldn’t stand by it. I need your help to get out of it without him knowing I’m leaving. If he knows, he’ll kill me.”

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

“That I can do, mom. I’ll make a phone call.”

Stepping away, filling up his mug with some truly fantastic fair-trade coffee, he pulled out his iPhone and called Curtis Holt.

“Curtis? My mom needs your help.”

**_Back at Wildcat Kickboxing and Muay Thai in the Glades…._ **

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(Laurel Lance’s POV)

She had finished her own individual work and forms, even as she was still trying to figure out who in this gym could train with her to give her the live sparring that she needed. Uncle Ted was young of mind, and of spirit, but he was not young of body anymore. It hurt her to think this, and she imagined it hurt him more to know it, but she could not keep sparring with him. She loved Valentia and Juanita like they were her own children, and the idea that she could somehow injure their father was not something she wanted to dwell on.

But as Ted walked out of his office, holding a pair of escrima sticks in one hand and a blindfold in the other while dragging everyone in the gym who wasn’t already working with a teacher over, she couldn’t help but wonder what he was doing. She was already tired, she had finished her sparring for the day, so she didn’t get what was happening. And then Ted walked over to her and explained himself. She appreciated both that he was making the effort to explain, and that he was doing it quietly. While she had heard some of the ways that the people in this gym talked about the Black Canary and took pride in the fact most thought she was a hero, she imagined that a lot of that would be quite different if they knew she trained here.

“I watched the tape of your fight with the Phantom, and I realized we had gone easy on you. All of us had. That goes for your boyfriend, too. We thought you guys didn’t need to be pushed, that what you had gone through in your time away made it so we just had to keep you sharp.

We were wrong. And it’s because of that, as much as what the Phantom and the Dark Archer did, that you got hurt that night. You weren’t ready for that fight, and Ben and I should have seen it.

But from now on, until your mission has ended, when you come here to train, you aren’t going to leave this gym tired. You’re going to leave this gym exhausted. Understand?”

She saw what he was doing for her, or at least trying to, in that moment. They had made the decision, all of them as a collective, that they would take down Tempest. And if that meant that Laurel and Oliver needed to have their training go into warp speed to make sure they were ready for whatever was coming back at them, she could respect that.

So, as she stood in the center of the ring with the escrima sticks in her hands as she was blindfolded, she knew what Uncle Ted was planning. If she wanted to get used to fighting not against rent-a-security mooks, but against people with tactical planning and real-world experience on their side, she needed to make it so that every strike and form flowed like it was instinct. And with the sticks, more so than even her kusari-fundo, that flow state that Ricardo Diaz had been talking out would be a lot easier to enter. She would need that.

She never again, for a second, wanted to feel the way the Phantom had made her feel. It wasn’t so much that she didn’t think there was a better female fighter out there in the world than her. She knew, objectively, that there had to be. But it was how powerless, how **WEAK** , the Phantom made her feel that got to her.

So, as she kept walking and working her way through the opponents she couldn’t see but could only feel and sense, she kept remembering how she felt as the Phantom wore her down and knocked her out. And as she did it, throwing strikes and blows from her instinctual memory, she could feel herself becoming calmer, and more centered. Without being arrogant, this was the person she wanted to be from now on.

(Ted Grant’s POV)

Watching his niece was enthralling. There wasn’t a word that fit the actual truth of what he was seeing better than that.

Even blindfolded and with a set of escrima sticks in her hands, she still moved like someone who could have been training at a Shaolin monastery in China in the old ways he had always wanted to learn. She was just that graceful, that flowing and beautiful in her movement and footwork. It was like watching a dancer, almost.

He only said almost because all he had to do was watch her _LAND_ a strike and understand the difference. When she moved, she was flowing and gorgeous. But when she landed a blow, it was like watching a bomb go off. If she could figure out the way to be like this, the Phantom wouldn’t stand a chance.

And finally, as the last foe fell, Ted blew the whistle and removed the blindfold.

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

It had always been one of the draws of this school, that everyone here was a qualified martial artist. She had learned how to sharpen up her skills just by osmosis here, so it didn’t always feel like she was head and shoulders above just about everyone else in here. But now, as she came back to herself, she realized that she was no longer the case.

All around her, like a spoiled child deciding she no longer wanted to play with her toys, were strewn karate-ka, pencak silat fighters, students of the Tiger and Dragon claw style of kung fu, and taekwondo players. Every last one of them was at least a red belt. Some were headed to major international tournaments, or trying to attain higher levels of black belts. And it hadn’t mattered. She had run through them all.

And as she saw Ted smiling from ear-to-ear, in a way she hadn’t ever seen him do before, she felt confident in a way she hadn’t before either. She would need to be careful to not let this confidence turn into arrogance, but she could admit it to herself now.

She was Dinah Laurel Lance. She was the Black Canary. And it was past time the criminals of this city, the people who turned the law and justice into a joke, understood just what she was capable of. Because now, finally, she knew.

**_Back at the Quiver……._ **

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(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Curtis had called him and told him his new bow, quiver, and arrows were ready.

It had been a long and laborious process to get them all right, but Oliver could freely admit that only a quarter of that was down to Curtis. In a bigger part of his mind than he would have liked to admit, he could still see the Dark Archer there. He could still feel the broadhead of that arrow in his shoulder, still feel the cold fear coursing through his veins as he tried to fight a master one-armed and quickly lost.

Maybe the worst part of it, though, was hearing that he wasn’t strong enough. It had haunted his nightmares for five years, the idea that all he had suffered through somehow meant he still wouldn’t be good enough for Laurel. It was not a thought that left him easily, but he knew it needed to.

To do what he demanded of himself, he had to be willing to let that voice in the back of his head go. It wasn’t true, and he knew it wasn’t, that he would never be strong enough for Laurel. Right now, just by saying it out loud, he knew he was. And when he picked up his bow and went back into battle, he would be proving it.

But first, he hoped Curtis had been working on making him the right bow. It needed to be the right draw weight, and the right balances, because he wanted to feel as close to the bow Shado had built for him as it could be. 

And, as he picked up the bow with the care one would pick up a priceless treasure, he realized Curtis had done the job far better than anyone could have expected.

This would be the bow of any archer’s dreams. In fact, as he looked at it, it was a dead ringer for a compound version of the yumi that Shado and Slade had him train on when they were all together on Yeon Og. How Curtis had done this, he never knew but he needed to thank him for doing it. But besides the emotional resonance, the bow fit his primary needs for combat. It was a titanium aluminide compound bow that was clearly strong and durable, but still particularly light. This was vital because a bow that weighed him down wouldn’t work for the kind of combat archery that he used, and besides would make stealth missions all the harder.

And then he saw the quiver and arrows, and would have wept from the beauty of it. These were arrows that could, very easily, have been smithed by a true master of the form. They had even been fletched, with mint-green plastic feathers. This was beautiful work.

This would be the bow he would have in his home when his days as the Green Arrow were done. But he couldn’t think about that. There were miles to go before he slept. And he would see the Dark Archer again. 

And when he did, with this bow and the strength the family he had built gave him, he knew the outcome would be different.


	18. The Penny Drops

At Wildcat Muay Thai and Kickboxing in the Glades….

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(Ben Turner’s POV)

After he had given up being the Bronze Tiger in Coast City, Benjamin Turner traveled the world learning from whoever would teach him. He didn’t intend for his pilgrimage to be for the rest of his life, after all. He knew he wanted to teach, and in order to feel like he could do that to a level where any students he did have would be well-trained, he needed to travel. But his first stop had been the most vital. Yes, his taekwondo teacher was vital as a young man. There was no way he would have become the Bronze Tiger without those skills, and even thinking about how badly it all ended, he still treasured those memories in the aggregate.

But the man he was trained by after Master Sang-Hoon was even more vital. Because as soon as he set down roots in Guangzhou after arriving in China, he had quickly become lucky enough to have been a student of the legendary O-Sensei, alongside Lady Shiva and Ricardo Diaz. After he had taught them all they could know the three went their separate ways, vowing to live by their master’s example. He knew for a fact Shiva and Diaz had, as they had been the co-trainers of Dinah Laurel Lance and taught her both all the skills and forms they had learned at the O-Sensei’s feet and the discipline and purity of spirit and soul that he had wanted his students to possess.

Now, after having buried the O-Sensei in accordance with his wishes, Ben Turner suddenly felt like there were still things, still questions, he needed the answers to.

Right now, he was training a hero-in-waiting. Oliver Queen had long since shown that he could be a true master with a bow. The shots he made, both in distance and audacity, were a true wonder to behold. But as a hand-to-hand fighter, the Green Arrow still missed the mark plenty.

But he knew how to fix this problem, how to make Oliver Queen into the fighter he needed to be.

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

As Oliver walked into Wildcat Muay Thai and Kickboxing, he saw Ben Turner standing at the front door with his arms outstretched and asking for his bow and quiver. This was going to be awkward.

He knew he was supposed to be thinking just of hand-to-hand combat when he walked into this place. That had been the deal he had made with Ben Turner, and he was planning on living up to it. But it always felt comfortable, and secure, to have his bow nearby. He was an archer in his soul, and to not have the tools of his trade where he can reach them initially filled him with a disquiet that he had not felt since Yeon-Og.

But as he thought about it, that uneasiness was a good thing. As he remembered back on his five years away, that feeling of not knowing what came next had always been immediately before he learned a new skill and grew to master it.

So, if he had to learn how to fight, to truly defend his city with all the skills that he could learn, being a little worried about not knowing what was coming next was a familiar feeling.

Besides, and it had been many nights watching an actual kung fu master in his bed to help him get here, he wanted to make it to a place where he was like one of those old kung fu masters who could block strikes solely through upper-body and head movement. He could see it now. Him going into battle with a long Van Dyke beard, with the bow Curtis had made for him on his back, and defeating enemies alongside Laurel with nothing more than classic skill. Being old masters alongside Laurel, he realized, meant he could grow old WITH Laurel. That feeling was so good, so perfectly right, that he wanted it. He would become a master with his love, would help to serve those who would pick up his mantle when he finally rested, and have the family he wanted. And then, the penny dropped. If he wanted that dream, he would have to become more than an archer.

So, as he put his bow in its velvet-lined case and removed the quiver from around his back before handing both to Master Turner, he bowed to his teacher and waited for his next instructions.

(Ben Turner’s POV)

He understood that, at least as far as Oliver Queen was concerned, he had always learned through combat. It didn’t do him any good to spend hours reading about forms from the old texts. This was someone who learned by doing, and he would feed that philosophy.

What was more, he knew Oliver Queen loved Laurel Lance and wanted to be worthy of her. It was unlike any superhero relationship he had ever seen before, in that their competition with each other fed their love and made it stronger. If Laurel did 100 hook kicks, Oliver would want to do 200 just to make sure he was as good as she was. He wasn’t jealous of her skill with kicking, nowhere close, but instead deeply proud and desirous to get to that level himself. They pushed each other to be better, and relied on each other for emotional support and confidence when things got hard. In many ways, it was the kind of relationship that could serve as a model for some of the heroes whose arrogance and greed had turned their own willpower and moral code rancid.

So, how to help someone who needed to learn by doing and whose entire motivational structure appeared to be put together around the notion that he wanted to do better, BE better, for his love?

Well, he thought to himself in the days after their loss to the Phantom and the Dark Archer, he had to think where Laurel’s skills weren’t the best and that took him a while. Her kung fu was excellent in just about every animal form and even the more esoteric sub-groups of said animal forms, as was just about everything else that O-Sensei and Lady Shiva together had found and taught, but strangely there were styles that she had not even bothered trying. Pencak Silat was not something she had a particularly grand interest in mastering, and it had been the same for most of the Indonesian martial arts. Sure, she was better than most at them because it was abundantly clear that she was a natural polymath when it came to martial arts. But still, she was of merely a high level as opposed to world-class. There would be their way in.

It was a little manipulative to do it this way, but it had to get done. There could not be a repeat of what happened in that warehouse, for their city and for the both of them. Tempest would be a nightmare they needed to wake everyone in this city from, and that simply could not be done if the two people who were the best equipped to do that were not in prime condition.

“The Green Arrow represents something to this city. He represents honor and justice, things people in this city may not have believed in anymore. But he will not matter to them the way he should if the man underneath the hood is not as skilled as he should be. I can’t help you with archery. There are people, skilled archers in this region of the country, who would be only too happy to help you with that. But I am doing this to help you become as skilled with your hands, feet, knees, and elbows as you are with a bow. And in that spirit, I have made a plan.

Mr. Queen, I’ve been studying Laurel’s fighting skills. If you wanted to master most martial arts as she has mastered them, we would be here for a very long time. But there are things she does not know to the complete peak of her knowledge. Her master, Lady Shiva, was a fellow student of mine with perhaps the greatest teacher of the martial arts the world has ever known, a man who we only called O-Sensei. His teachings, and what Lady Shiva has learned traveling the world, mean that there is very little Laurel cannot be confident in being world-class at. But there are things I know that Laurel’s teachers did not know. Lady Shiva never held great interest in the martial arts of the Malay Archipelago. This is where we can make you her equal, because those arts and forms are not widely known. 

Before I teach you how to fight, however, I want you to teach you the thing you did not learn during your time away, and a thing I should have taught you when you returned home. I want to make it so that it is as close to impossible as it can be to hit you cleanly.

Are you ready to begin?”

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Well, this was exciting. He would be taught in skills Laurel had not mastered, and taught to be a world-class defensive fighter. These were things he needed to be, to be the hero his city deserved. And judging by what Tempest was, there was no doubt in his mind that he would need to be the best he could possibly be. Somewhere along the line, and he was unsure of how it had happened precisely, his city had become a place like this. A place where one man, guided by nothing more than grief and rage, could become this thing that would want to destroy an entire neighborhood, and have enough resources and charm so that he could build a conspiracy to make sure it happened. This was a nightmare, and one he felt a distinct responsibility to awaken his city from.

So, as Ben Turner wrapped his hands behind his back with rope and instructed him to work on moving just his head and upper body to avoid strikes, Oliver Queen submitted himself fully to the tasks his trainer would give him. In this gym, between these ropes, he was not what Shado had called him. He was not a master archer here.

He was, because he needed to be and because his city demanded it, an apprentice again. But the next time he went out to bring justice to those who thought they could hide from it; he would be ready.

**_That night, at the Queen Mansion……._ **

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(Oliver Queen’s POV)

After all the training he and Laurel had been doing, it was a truly welcoming thing to see a buffet tray of food waiting for him and his wife in all ways but the legal ones. He knew Raisa and the kitchen staff had done it, on his mother’s suggestion, so he hugged her deeply and said thank you to her in perfect Russian. There were things about his 5 years away from his family and his loves that kept him up at night, but the notion that he could thank his 2nd mother in the language she understood the best was never going to be one of them.

But as he ate, and the conversation flowed warmly, he felt so much like himself that he couldn’t stand it. This was what he missed when he was on Yeon Og. Slade and Shado gave him hints of it, and by god he hoped they were okay, but being around his actual blood family felt so much like perfect.

Then Thea dropped her purse.

Reaching to grab it, Oliver noticed two things that chilled his blood. A pill bottle that did not, in any way, look like it held prescription pills. And a post-it with a phone number on it. He knew Thea wasn’t using, but it didn’t matter the reason why she had the pills.

Glancing at Laurel, using those few weeks in Incheon where he had taught himself basic sleight-of-hand to make sure she saw what this was without drawing too much attention to it from the rest of the table, Oliver exhaled slowly and plastered a smile that looked fake to Laurel only.

He didn’t have to say a word. There would be no reason he would need to. As soon as they were done with dinner here, there were going to be a lot of drug dealers in the Glades and throughout the city for that matter who would be wishing that no one had ever found out about Vertigo.

This wasn’t about Tempest, or making sure some rich billionaire paid for his crimes. Tonight, a different kind of pollution was about to be removed from their city.

**_A few hours later, at the Quiver……_ **

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(Curtis Holt’s POV)

He had been with them for months, and there were still things about the preparation of the Black Canary and Green Arrow for their nightly patrols that confounded Curtis Holt. But as he thought about it, it made sense. They had been trained by different people, with different expectations and skills as a result of that, so the way they got themselves in the right frame of mind to go into battle would fit that.

The Black Canary meditated, in a nearly dark room with a blindfold on as she did her wing-chun and dragon-style Kung Fu hand forms until she felt completely at ease. At her feet lay her escrima sticks, having found that they got her into the proper flow state quicker and allowed her the chance to chain some **interesting** combos together. On a hook behind her, as she meditated in a simple sports bra and shorts, was the suit that resembled a hapkido dobok. She demanded peace, calm, and focus.

The Green Arrow, on the other hand, was about power and speed. He grabbed his compound bow and nocked and fired at tennis balls one after the other from a motorized fast-pitch machine, refusing to stop until each ball was hit dead-center with an arrowhead. When he was done, the sounds of speed metal playing in the background, he put the practice bow back in its velvet-lined case and made quick notes on everything from its ease of fire to what he liked about the arrows he was firing. Holstering his bow, and putting 60 of his favorite trick arrows in his quiver, Oliver then slipped on his ghillie suit and made sure that the video camera and GPS locator was turned on.

Curtis watched this all with something close to pride. He knew he never wanted to go out in the field, no matter how much Ted Grant and Ben Turner had been working with him to ensure that he could handle himself if mugged. But to know that he could help these heroes, these warriors of uncommon dignity and honor, do what their city needed doing filled him with a joy he could not understand.

Tonight, though, this was not about making sure someone who had pillaged pension money, or set up people in the city’s housing projects to suffer, knew what true justice and true fear felt like. Tonight, this was about making sure that those in the city who peddled poison to children knew that their actions had consequences.

**_That night, in Seaside Heights……._ **

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(Laurel Lance’s POV)

This was about the 10th drug house they had kicked in the door on, and it was a weird experience. For one, it seemed like they were all doing this in residential neighborhoods so the people in Seaside Heights were utterly excited to see people that they had only heard about on the news in their neighborhoods cleaning up the riffraff. As they waited for Curtis to tell them where they were going next, they got thanked repeatedly for what they were doing for the city. This, she thought, was why she knew this wasn’t a 1-year thing. This was about striving TOWARDS something, towards an ideal of excellence that would take years for their city to reach.

But the other thing that kept bothering her was the notion that because of Tempest, neighborhoods like this were just allowed to disintegrate with no one particularly caring about it. Sure, this was a neighborhood near the ports so it wasn’t like she had been here a ton of times. But these were people who had jobs, good union jobs that you could live on and raise a family with, and Tempest had made it so living here was harder and harder.

Then, finally, she heard it. Vertigo. The man, and the drug who bore his namesake, had been found in an abandoned sugar warehouse. Of course he had, because absolutely none of these new villains seemed to be particularly interested in having their headquarters be anything other than some level in one of those video games that she played when she was a kid.

But if this was the person who was polluting their city, they’d stop him. No matter where.

**_A few hours later….._ **

As the Green Arrow and Black Canary found the ship, Oliver having taken the time to reload his quiver with a fresh 60 trick arrows courtesy of a drone Curtis Holt had piloted, they immediately went into action. Laurel busied herself with the fools who decided to confront her hand-to-hand, using her near-limitless arsenal of martial arts and well-timed blows with her escrima sticks to float through them all. She was particularly proud of the fact that she had easily managed to hit that butterfly twist kick and cheat 900-degree kick she had been working on with Ted’s careful guidance. There would come a day, in the hopefully not-too-distant future, where she would meet the Phantom again. She wanted to be completely ready, to be as sharp in her attacks and fluid in her footwork as she could be.

Meanwhile, the Green Arrow had been dealing with prep for a different opponent. The Dark Archer had out-shot him, he knew that now. He had used the element of surprise, and Oliver’s focus on avenging Laurel, to land a shot that would have been impossible under normal circumstances. From what he had heard, and the few autopsy photos of the previous victims of the Dark Archer he had been able to see, whoever was under the hood was exceptionally brutal. He didn’t care if you bled out slowly or died in tremendous pain. So, Oliver was working on shooting like Shado had taught him. The key to that style was, and always had been, precision. So, with every shot, he was making sure he hit the target right the first time. He was already making the criminal life painful. He didn’t need to make people suffer more than they had to.

But that wasn’t all he was working on. Pencak Silat, and its cousins in the Indonesian martial arts library, required a ton of properly-done hand forms. So, as he made his way through the shop floor to the executive offices, he was making sure he had all his fine detail work down. If he saw the Dark Archer again, he wouldn’t beat him by being a lesser copy of what he was. He would win by embracing his humanity.

So, when he and Laurel met Vertigo, he was not in the mood to play around. Vertigo tried to fight them off with some knife-fighting techniques Laurel had seen before during her time training with Shiva, so she simply blocked and parried with her sticks until Oliver could land a shot with an ensnarement arrow that hung the dealer up to a lighting fixture.

Instructing Curtis to call in the DEA, and the State Police’s anti-drug unit, the Green Arrow and Black Canary had a moment just to themselves. And then, the penny dropped for the both of them.

“Malcolm Merlyn wants to destroy the Glades. So does Katherine. Who else would you trust to protect your motives than yourself? The Merlyns are the Dark Archer and the Phantom!”


	19. Rival Schools

**_At the Quiver……_ **

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(John Diggle’s POV)

Well, he supposed he had been brought in to this little confederacy for a purpose. Time to go about the business of fulfilling it.

Once Oliver and Laurel said over the microphones in the Green Arrow’s suit that they had figured out that the Merlyns were the Dark Archer and the Phantom, John went to work. He poured 3 shot glasses full of some of that Chinese hard liquor called baijiu that he imagined Laurel kept around for work such as this, and called Ben Turner and Ted Grant over to one of the big roundtables in the Quiver while Curtis Holt grabbed a blackboard and a box of markers. By the time the Green Arrow and Black Canary got back to the quiver, he wanted to have a plan for them. He wanted to be useful to these kids, and making sure they knew precisely what they were up against was the very best way that he could think of to do precisely that.

“So, we know that Malcolm Merlyn and Katherine Kane-Merlyn are the Dark Archer and the Phantom. And judging from what we saw in that warehouse, it wouldn’t be us jumping to conclusions to say that they have some real training. You don’t get as skilled as they do without being taught by a dojo of some renown. Where do you think they could have gone?” John asks, running through his mental rolodex to try and work out all the secret societies and guilds who could have done this work.

“Well, there’s the League. But knowing what Malcolm wants to do, they’d never train someone who has that as their endgame. Besides, their initiates are with them for life. So, they’re out, THANK GOD” says Ben Turner, and John Diggle and Ted Grant nod their head in agreement. Dealing with that, John knew, was not something he wanted to have to do even on a bet.

“Something about the way they both move, and the forms they used, gives me an idea. I’ve seen those forms once before, a lifetime ago. Curtis, can you show us the tapes from the warehouse?” Ben Turner asks, and Ted Grant raises an eyebrow.

As Ben Turner explained his theory, John Diggle called his wife Lyla and explained what was going on. For the first time since coming back from the ‘Stan, he felt useful. Like himself again. Much like the rest of the city, he thanked God for the Green Arrow and Black Canary.

(Ben Turner’s POV)

He hoped he was wrong, sincerely. There was nothing he wanted to be in this moment more than wrong.

He had grown to really admire Oliver Queen’s willpower and discipline. No matter what he told Oliver he needed to do to become the best fighter, Oliver had done it. There was nothing he admired more in a student, and Oliver had rather quickly become one of his favorites. If he asked Ted, he knew he’d say the same thing about Laurel. They felt vital, being around these kids and their sincere commitment to seeing the wrong things put right. He wanted so badly to protect them from the dojos and ancient guilds that existed to defeat people like them. 

But he also, from whispers through certain martial arts circles, had heard tales of the 12 Brothers of Silk that made him realize just how dangerous Malcolm Merlyn and Katherine Kane-Merlyn were if his guesses were right. For starters, their training was uncommonly brutal and uncommonly thorough in equal measure.

Most dojos trained just in hand-to-hand fighting. But the 12 Brothers of Silk made it clear that the students they took in would learn more than the finer points of kung fu. They taught archery, stealth, and battle tactics. It made more and more of a dark kind of sense that a school like that would create warriors who would see a place like the Glades as a cancer to be destroyed.

He needed to get them ready. So did Ted and John, for that matter. Everyone who was helping the Green Arrow and the Black Canary become what they needed to become ought to get ready. Because, if he was right, what all of them were about to go through would be, in a word, biblical.

**_The next morning, at Wildcat Kickboxing and Muay Thai in the Glades……_ **

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(Ted Grant’s POV)

For things like this, Theodore Jose Luis Grant did something he couldn’t have dreamed of doing when he first opened his gym. The money wasn’t right enough, his reputation wasn’t strong enough, and besides that this would always be a place for his city’s struggling underclasses to learn what he had learned from martial arts.

But today, he was closed. What Laurel and Oliver had discovered, and the answers that came from the questions it opened, was entirely too big to be dealt with over cold pizza in an abandoned warehouse. This needed to be seen when they were all fresh.

Besides, from what Ben Turner had told him, this was the work of the 12 Brothers of Silk. The training Malcolm Merlyn and Katherine Kane-Merlyn had was the direct result of what those 12 madmen in the Singaporean wetlands did. Sure, he knew it wasn’t the original 12 anymore. Those men had died, or been put in jails so deep that no one would find them again. But their lessons, and their skills, had apparently been passed on to another 12 psychopaths with no understanding of what the martial arts were supposed to be for.

He knew he was a hypocrite thinking this. He, after all, was training perhaps the world’s best martial artist to be a vigilante. That perhaps came with an Everest-sized grain of salt, in that there was an ocean-sized division between Lady Shiva’s skills and everyone else’s. He knew this, and he imagined so did Laurel. The fact that she took pride in knowing it took Lady Shiva a whole 5 moves to defeat her, when it took her about 1 to beat everyone else, was proof she probably did know.

But the thing that was different is that he taught his students the value of restraint. Even now, with a student who was in their early 20’s with five years of direct training under the two best trainers one could have, he was routinely making sure that she knew when to fight and when not to. He held no respect for teachers like Master Hong Chou Ran, men who taught the martial arts to be less about beauty and more about suffering. There was no reason to teach your students to break bones and injure people.

So, knowing that there was a school like that chilled him to the bone. It also made him want to make sure his students were fully prepared. Because beyond just the skilled and utterly depraved opponents they were facing, these were also the heads of a vast conspiracy to destroy their city. To beat it, they couldn’t be the same as they would have been before they knew. They needed to be better. This required more of all of them.

The Green Arrow and Black Canary could handle the fighting. If Ted, Ben, and John were going to be useful, it would be as the people who saw this for what it was.

This was a dispute of ideologies, between warring schools. This was a pair of psychopaths trying to commit domestic terrorism.

This ended now.

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

She had not slept well last night. The joy of figuring it out had faded with remarkable speed. To know that two people who were thought of as titans to the people of this city were monsters did not feel good. How could they have become this? Who would have allowed someone with so much hatred, so much needless rage, to enter a martial arts dojo and be trained?

The martial arts were about balance, restraint, and honor. It was about finding the beauty in movement, and not making people suffer when you didn’t absolutely have to. Why had the Merlyns been drawn to a school like that, a school that taught nothing but the very worst parts about the arts she loved?

Every master she had from her first time throwing a punch in anger, until right now, had taught her the value of restraint. She had learned to not fight for personal glories or to feed her own ego, but to stand up for those who did not have the gifts she did. It enraged her to know there was someone out there, some sensei in name only, who taught people to be violent with their art instead of merciful.

If she did nothing else, she would face Katherine Kane-Merlyn and make her dishonorable tactics be seen for what they were. The 12 Brothers of Silk were known to Lady Shiva, and Ricardo Diaz. Even though she hadn’t mentioned them specifically, there had been many a post-training speech given about how she found schools like theirs personally distasteful. Even through mouthfuls of sticky rice, Laurel had always stated her assent.

And now, to save her city, she would have to defeat someone who was trained in this manner. She knew her sensei would not understand. But she was looking forward to it.

**_Meanwhile, at Golden Snake Kung-Fu in Broadmoor……_ **

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(Katherine Kane-Merlyn’s POV)

The martial arts were about strength. Anyone who believed that nonsense about it being about balance hadn’t really fought, hadn’t lived a life where they knew the responsibility that came with being the strongest and the best. When you lived like that, you had to become comfortable with knowing what you need to do to make sure those who were weaker than you **STAYED** that way.

They needed to make sure that, once the Undertaking was done and the city was running just how they liked it, people always knew what was expected of them. They weren’t planning on making this place a utopia. But still, they needed to make sure that no one thought about foolish things like charity and helping your fellow man anymore. The Glades had needed charity, and look what getting it had turned it into. That was all the proof she, and her father, needed that charity was worthless.

Practicing her spinning hook kicks on a heavy bag, she couldn’t help but hope that the Black Canary somehow returned to challenge her again. Their first meeting had not been satisfactory. She wanted to break the city’s love of heroes, and teach them that a city like this could not be saved by anyone. But she hadn’t been able to do that. The Black Canary, whoever was underneath the hapkido hood, had fallen so easily. It was deeply unsatisfying.

She was not thinking of the Green Arrow. While she considered herself an above-average archer, the skill with the bow was her father’s mastery. She knew that only Lady Shiva could defeat her, but that was an easy thing to admit. Lady Shiva could defeat anyone.

Even Master Hong, who held no respect for anyone or anything, freely admitted that challenging Lady Shiva was a fool’s errand. But Katherine knew Shiva would not come to save Starling City. Only the Black Canary would stand in her way. And really, was that a test?

(Malcolm Merlyn’s POV)

The Green Arrow? Such a childish name for a boy playing a man’s game. To become a master with a bow, as he had become, took decades of hard work and getting used to seeing the loss of life up close and personal. You had to shoot until you could recite your ideal draw weight and length in your sleep, and be ok with the notion of seeing a target gurgle slowly from a wound that was both fatal and slow. If you couldn’t be those things, couldn’t get used to dealing out death, Malcolm didn’t believe that you had what it took to be an archer.

The bow you owned was a piece of your soul, and you ought to be able to connect to that every single time you fired it. He didn’t much care what it said about him that his compound bow, which he kept hung in his private quarters out of reach of anyone but him and Katherine, was jet-black. What mattered to him was what he used his bow for. He made sure every shot, every arrow that left his bow, was in service of making sure the Undertaking went off without a hitch. And yet, the Undertaking was months away now, and his only competition was licking his wounds in the Glades and refusing to pop his head above water.

He knew the Green Arrow was young, stubborn, and incredibly stupid. Anyone who willingly walked around with a mint-green compound bow, and used plastic fletching instead of feathers as the old masters had done, showed no respect for the form. And then there were those **RIDICULOUS** trick arrows. What kind of archer used a smoke bomb arrow, or a cable arrow, when just shooting someone with a broadhead would do the work?

So, he smiled. If the Green Arrow needed a rematch, if he ever got the bright idea to try and stop what was inevitable, he would win. It was a man against a boy.

**_Meanwhile, at the Queen Mansion……._ **

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(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Pencak Silat was so much…. FUN. It made him happy to know he was learning something that was efficient, powerful, and still had the desire for balance and inner peace that all the martial arts Laurel knew had.

At times like this, as he practiced his forms in the training hall that he had set up in an otherwise-used wing of the mansion, Oliver could feel himself becoming one with every strike and block. This was, he supposed, how Laurel felt every time she mastered a new martial art.

It wasn’t as Zen as practicing with his bow was, but nothing could live up to that standard. Yao Fei first, and then Shado and Slade afterward, had made sure he could always find the best parts of himself when he drew back his bow. But if practicing and sparring with Ben Turner came close to that standard, he would be exceedingly happy. He could be the hero, alongside Laurel, that his city deserved. And right now, it deserved and needed one more than it perhaps even knew.

Five years on Yeon-Og had not made him particularly convinced of the inherent goodness of all people, in the way Laurel was. But he knew, in his soul, that everyone needed the chance to live their own lives the way he did. If they chose to use that path for evil? That would be when he stepped in. But everyone deserved the chance.

That, he realized, was the part that he hated most about what the Merlyns were doing. They were taking people, innocent and guilty alike, and consigning them to the same fate based on a zip code and a section on a map. He knew there were people in the Glades who were criminals, but they deserved the right to be judged on their own decisions.

Not this, though. This was inhumane, and barbarous. And, as he finished up his hand forms and moved to work with that nunchaku variant Ben Turner had given him, he knew what he’d do.

The Phantom and the Dark Archer didn’t need to die. No one did, unless it was life and death. He had seen enough death that he didn’t want to add to it unless he had to. But they had to be stopped, and he and Laurel would stop them.

Now, and always, he made himself a vow. If you wished to do Starling City harm, the Green Arrow and the Black Canary would meet you at the door and they would stop you. 


	20. Get Connected

**_At the Quiver……._ **

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(Curtis Holt’s POV)

It had taken his mapping software weeks to put it together, and even more time to cross-reference the information into something that remotely resembled a route, but it had finally happened. Now he just had to put it together, and they could stop the storm that was threatening to drench Starling City for good. Sure, it would be hard work. But, over his time in this weird confederacy, he had grown to not be fearful of that. Things like this were worth doing.

He loved this city. It had supported him during his run to the Olympic Games and raised money for his mom to fly to London to see him win the bronze medal in the decathlon. And while he couldn’t pick up arms to defend it, he could help those who would.

So, where would the nexus point for this thing be? He was pretty sure Malcolm was so convinced of the elegance of his plan that he would have sub-contracted the work of setting up the bombs. Even saying that out loud sent a shudder through him. Malcolm Merlyn, who he had interviewed with coming out of college before deciding to start his own firm, was somehow the type of man who could subcontract out the work of making sure an entire neighborhood was destroyed.

For what he needed to find out, the “War Council” needed to be formed. So, grabbing 3 mugs of that disturbingly good coffee Oliver Queen had shipped in and making a phone call to a local Middle Eastern restaurant for a proper breakfast buffet, Curtis Holt made a phone call to John Diggle, Ted Grant, and Ben Turner.

When you need help, and Curtis did, best to ask for it.

(John Diggle’s POV)

At times like this, the Turkish-style coffee in the Quiver was more than just the manna of the gods it usually was. Sarah had been particularly effusive last night in her unwillingness to go to sleep, and while Lyla had got him hired on at ARGUS as a terrorism consultant, there were seemingly not enough hours in the day to do what he was needing done. And then, as he was wolfing down breakfast, Curtis Holt called and told him they had an opening. He knew, almost immediately, what that meant.

When he had agreed to be a part of this confederacy, he knew what his role in it would be. He wouldn’t be helping the Green Arrow and the Black Canary fight. That’s what Ted Grant and Ben Turner would be doing, and they were both excellent at that. If he was going to help, he’d be a quartermaster and someone who provided the Green Arrow and the Black Canary with information.

So, when Tempest became the thing they were fighting against, he was happy beyond words that ARGUS allowed him the chance to liaise with multiple government agencies inside the USA and out. Because what Tempest was couldn’t just be beaten with martial arts skill and a compound bow. That was just the Merlyn’s, the tip of the proverbial arrow. To defeat this, the city needed true leadership that could not be bought or otherwise corrupted. And that would take time.

So, with nothing but time at his back, John Diggle got to work. He had seen the map Curtis Holt put together, and began to think of what sort of explosive could do what Malcolm and Katherine Kane-Merlyn would want. It’d have to be something he could control, as that logo for the “fireworks” meant that it couldn’t mean he could just sink the Glades into the Pacific Ocean and be done with it. Too many questions would be asked about that. For it to work, this Undertaking had to look accidental.

At this, John Diggle had to give the devil his due. Malcolm Merlyn had managed to make domestic terrorism seem to be almost elegant. He had made it so that the bombs were underneath the internet hubs and telecommunication lines that served the Glades. When they went off, no one could save the Glades from burning. If you couldn’t call 911, or let people know to evacuate, you’d have a stampede. You’d have people dying in downed buildings, or drowning in floodwaters.

But how could you do a controlled demolition like that, and not have people know? Well, he knew Tempest had people in the police force so he knew the Bomb Squad wouldn’t be able to help. Calling around to the ATF wouldn’t work either, because it’s not like they could run a clandestine op for something like this. Plus, he knew if the Merlyns figured out the ATF was in town they’d just move the things and re-start the process all over again.

It was at that moment, as he poured himself a cup of mint tea and then grabbed a bottle of cinnamon sugar, that it came to him.

He’d help to walk Curtis through disassembling them himself. During his three tours in the ‘Stan, he had seen all manner of IED’s so he knew what he was looking for better than anyone else on this team. Besides that, he wanted to be useful to everyone here. The Phantom and the Dark Archer were the provinces of the Black Canary and Green Arrow. Stopping Tempest, that could be the responsibility of everyone else.

Glancing at his phone, he asked Curtis Holt for his help. If he was going to be the person that the Green Arrow and Black Canary needed, now was as good a time as any to get started.

**_Meanwhile, at the Queen Mansion……._ **

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(Oliver Queen’s POV)

There were few things more beautiful, and sexier, than watching Laurel Lance move. He never got tired of watching her do anything related to the martial arts.

Even now, watching her fly through a plyometrics routine and then start on jumping rope as a warmup, she was beautiful to him in a way no one else could ever be. He could see them growing old together, training in the way old masters did and loving every second of it. He wanted that life. He wanted kids with her, a family who understood their responsibilities to the world.

But he didn’t just want it for himself. He wanted it for Starling City like a starving man wants to be fed. This was his HOME, for goodness sakes, and it hurt that people didn’t have the chance to fulfill all their own dreams. That, more than breaking corruption and bringing justice to his city, was the point of this quest. He was going to make this place rich in more than just wealth. He, and Laurel, would make this a place you would be proud to call home.

But to do that, he had to get Malcolm Merlyn and Katherine Kane-Merlyn off the board. He had been responsible for too much bloodshed in Seoul and Incheon, so killing them was not something he wanted to do. He knew he’d have to consider it, though. He had no doubt they wouldn’t go down without a fight.

But it didn’t matter. He was getting very good at Pencak Silat, and he was beginning to become interested in this Burmese variant of kickboxing called Lethwei. This city and the quest his father had told him was honorable and proper with his dying breaths, deserved nothing less than his absolute best.

He saw Laurel practicing her combinations and doing Wing Chun shapes on a striking dummy like she had done them all her life, and knew he would give her his best too. For as long as they drew breath, they’d defend their city. They’d defend the things that mattered to everyone.

Home. Family. Doing the right thing when the right thing is hard. Those were the things that mattered to him, and he knew they mattered to Laurel. What kind of people would they be if they didn’t fight for them?

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

She was ready now for the rematch. Ever since the first time she had dealt with the Phantom, she had studied that tape from the warehouse and timed everything that Katherine Kane-Merlyn did. Even just by watching, Laurel knew her kung-fu was better. She moved quicker, with more grace, and her attacks flowed smoother. This was as close to arrogance as she was going to allow herself to get, because she had seen what falling into arrogance had done to some of Lady Shiva’s students.

Even if she didn’t think she could win, she’d never stop trying. That was the real difference between her and Oliver and the Merlyns. Somewhere along the line, the grief and rage got too great for Malcolm to handle by himself and he just stopped trying. And then his daughter joined him and together they went so far down that they couldn’t get back up again.

And now, guided by their grief and rage, they wanted to destroy the city.

This city needed better, needed to be BETTER, than that. They could not be led, could not be guided, by people who didn’t care about anyone besides themselves.

If they did nothing else, stood for nothing else, it would be that.

This city needed more. She hoped there would come a time when they didn’t always have to be the ones fighting for those ideals. She knew there’d be a time when the city would be strong enough that those polluting it would be fought by those who were supposed to do the fighting. But for right now, they would do it.

Oliver and her together. The five years of training in Indonesia had given her clarity, made her see the truth about herself. The big thing was that Oliver was her whole world in a way she hadn’t thought of before. He could lead the city out from the darkness, both as Oliver Queen and the Green Arrow. She knew it like she knew her own name.

They would beat Tempest. They would rebuild their city. And they would, when their work was done, grow old together with their love warming them. It would be… perfect.

**_Meanwhile, at Merlyn Global Group………_ **

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(Malcolm Merlyn’s POV)

The stage was set. Outside, city employees were setting up holiday decorations and those little Christmas lights things telling people what neighborhood they were driving through as they went off to do their last-minute shopping. But for the people of the Glades, the vengeance was soon coming. Their world as they knew it would end, and he would feel satisfied.

For a moment, he could feel Rebecca by his side. She had been so good, so kind and loving, and the thugs and trash that made up the Glades had snatched her away. He wanted to make them feel what he had. All of them, every person who lived in the Glades, deserved to die the way she died.

He was amused by the notion that the only two people who had a chance to stop him were silent. He knew he could break the Green Arrow and Black Canary for good if they challenged him. Despite that knowledge, though, he wished that they would still try. There was no point in victory if all those who could defeat you weren’t humiliated and broken.

But, he supposed, that was the price of being as good as they were. They had dispatched their only threats, and no one in the city truly could do anything to stop them. He supposed, when they wrote his grand epitaph, that would be in there. As both the businessman and the Dark Archer, he had mastered the skill of the comprehensive victory.

With his only enemies defeated, he would deliver the Glades. It was time. 

**_Back at the Quiver……_ **

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(Curtis Holt’s POV)

He had found them all. Every bomb that the Merlyns had put throughout the Glade, he had found them all. But to get his bomb-disposal drone down there and destroy them all, he needed Malcolm and Katherine distracted. And, besides, it was time. They had plotted enough, done enough damage to the undercarriage of the city, that they could not be allowed to live in the shadows. Their plot? Tempest? THAT had to be shown to the world. But to do it, the Phantom and the Dark Archer had to be stopped.

And, happily, he knew just the people who could. Dinah Laurel Lance and Oliver Jonas Queen had been waiting for this day, craving it. They had been training their bodies and minds for the chance to put the wrong things right, to be the heroes their city needed. And now, with the Undertaking hanging over everyone’s head, they would be called into action. Hell, this entire confederacy would.

Ben Turner was going to “clear a path” for the Green Arrow and Black Canary, as no one genuinely believed that the security at Merlyn’s offices wasn’t highly trained. While they all knew Oliver and Laurel could fight their way through said security, Ben had been only all too happy to take on that job. After all, he had explained, what the Merlyns was doing was beyond the pale. It was terrorism, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he hadn’t been able to stop it.

Ted Grant, Quentin Lance, and John Diggle were on crowd control. Once word got out of what the Merlyns had planned, there’d be riots. So, Quentin had changed the beat patrols to make sure his most people-friendly officers were near the buildings marked by Tempest. People would want to make sure the Glades were safe, and he’d help with that. Besides, if anyone got out of pocket, Ted and John looked suitably intimidating to make that seem a bad idea.

Tonight, one way or another, all of this ended. And, besides, it was time. So, his hands shaking, Curtis Holt made a phone call.

“Oliver? Laurel? Go get those sons of bitches!”

**_At the Merlyn Global Group……._ **

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(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Ben Turner had done what he said he would. With the aid of some truly magnificent Plum Blossom-style kung fu and taekwondo skills that were almost Olympian in their power and speed, he had beaten up about 25 guys and gotten them key cards that would take them truly anywhere they needed to go. If they survived this, and they had absolutely no doubt that they would, they would owe him a tremendous debt.

Walking in the front door, her gear bag including her modified hapkido dobok and escrima sticks over her shoulder as she knew Oliver’s gear bag held something similar, she knew this would be the battle of her life. Every form she had ever learned had been preparing her for this.

Bowing to him as masters did to other masters, Laurel watched as Oliver shook his hand and thanked him for what he had done. She knew, like she knew everything about the one true love she would ever have, that there would come a day when Oliver Queen could be considered a master. He just had to believe in himself, believe that he was more than just an archer who could fight. For someone who showed so much natural leadership potential, he just needed to be as confident in himself as he was in everyone else.

But that would be for later. For now, at this moment, she needed to be ready. The first time, they had charged in half-cocked and paid the price. That would not happen now.

So, moving behind a palm tree, she got changed. Laurel Lance was at home, watching Korean soap operas and preparing a japchae dish for herself and Oliver. That woman could not be here. The woman who was here was the Black Canary and she demanded justice.

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Tonight, he could feel something in the air. Curtis had wired their suits with a text-based communications system so that they were not distracted when they went through with what they knew they had to. But still, he could feel it. There was a sense in the air of finality, of inevitability.

He had been training for five years on a deserted island in the Yellow Sea, and then for this whole year in Starling City, for just a moment like this. For the first time since his return, he felt himself slip back into that tactical mindset he had developed in ARGUS’s service. He knew the Merlyns, as Tommy had been a family friend long enough that they both had the run of each other’s mansions. They loved their wealth, although Tommy had always enjoyed it more for what it provided him than how he could lord it over people. All of that was to say that he heard Malcolm’s speeches about how anything worth getting was worth earning.

So, as he put on his suit and compound bow, he knew what he was going to do would be earned. But he wanted it.

It had been Laurel’s kindness, her presence in his life, that had made him keep going. To watch her become the figure for good she always had been was a true joy in his life. And tonight, with his bow and with the skills he had been learning, he would be what he had always wanted to be. They would be partners, saving their city together.

(Malcolm Merlyn’s POV)

“Katherine, dear? Come look at this.”

He couldn’t BELIEVE it. Of all the arrogant and utterly stupid things to try and do, the Green Arrow and the Black Canary were in his loading dock in their full costumes. He knew they couldn’t beat him and his daughter. And so did they. But, yet, here they were.

The bombs were ready. The stage was set. All he had to do was pull up the curtain.

But he realized with a smirk on his face, the show wouldn’t matter if there wasn’t an audience. The people of the Glades would be too busy running for their worthless lives. The rest of the city wouldn’t care.

So, the Green Arrow and Black Canary would have to do. As he thought of it more, honestly it was poetic. The two children who got it in their heads that the Glades was worth defending would be forced to watch as it was destroyed.

Still, though, better to make their road up to their defeat earned.

“Mr. Fuqua? Between the C-Suite, and the loading dock, call all our security back in. Yes, even the off-the-books ones. We’ll have guests, and I want them to feel **_WELCOME_**.”

\-----------------------------------------------

Floor by floor, the Green Arrow and Black Canary fought. Oliver knew Curtis couldn’t send a drone with a refill for his quiver, so he fought unarmed as much as he could. This was a time to use the things Ben Turner had taught him, and that he had learned himself. So, as the floors increased, his confidence in the forms of Pencak silat that he had learned grew. This wasn’t kind what he was doing to these people. It wasn’t a flowing, balletic dance. He was smashing their heads into walls, and driving the wind out of people with that nunchaku Ben Turner had spent day and night training him on. The brutality of this style, the focus of it, appealed to him. He was, with every blow, sending a message.

The Black Canary, on the other hand, was a blur of movement and grace. Her sticks flew like a classical jazz drummer keeping time, and her kicks, elbows, knees, and fists glided through everyone like a scalding-hot katana. There was no wasted motion, no strike thrown for the thought of throwing it. Tonight, she couldn’t waste time. The people who had her city, her HOME, were near enough to be stopped.

With every floor cleared, the Merlyns were nowhere to be found. And, despite all their shared training to keep their tempers under control, this ANGERED the Green Arrow and Black Canary. Their city’s safety was in their hands, and to imagine that they were being forced to play a game for it was deeply offensive.

Finally, they made it to the C-Suites. If the Merlyns were going to be anywhere, here is where they would be. Before they walked in, though, they checked their armaments. Laurel had picked up a pair of Okinawan tonfa to go with her escrima sticks, and Oliver had kept his nunchaku tight to his waist. His quiver was only down a quarter, leaving him with 45 trick arrows left. Tonight, this would end.

**_Back at the Quiver……._ **

\-------------------------------------

(Curtis Holt’s POV)

Breathe. Think. RELAX.

He had used that same three-word mantra before every event of the decathlon at the London Olympics, and it seemed a good one to use now. He was trying not to throw a javelin, or throw a shotput. He was trying to save his home from bomb-making terrorists, while his allies were about to be locked in a brutal hand-to-hand brawl with those self-same terrorists. But none of it would matter if he couldn’t defuse the bombs.

So, breathe. Think. Relax. He kept saying this as he used the drone’s finely tuned pincers to disconnect each bomb. Thank god for the HD cameras on the drone, and the fact that John Diggle knew a former FBI Public Safety Bomb Technician. Because if that wasn’t in Mr. Diggle’s skill set, he didn’t know where he’d be. As he was running through the protocols and tactics, he wondered what everyone else was doing.

**_At the Boys and Girls Club in the Glades…._ **

\------------------------------------------------------------

(John Diggle’s POV)

Thank god he had spent some time around US Army culinary specialists during his three tours in Afghanistan. Because, now, there appeared to be nothing more than he could do for all these scared people than make sure they were fed. Lyla was stuck at ARGUS. Apparently, Waller was far less concerned about an act of domestic terrorism than any of them would have liked her to be.

Still, though, he was a consultant. Not an actual employee. Amanda Waller had no control over him. So, as much as it hurt him to know, he could do things like this. He could keep all these people calm.

He’d be the morale officer right now, like the guys he remembered who showed up with the USO tours. If he could swing it, he’d drop over to a local video store and see if he couldn’t get some cartoons. This was going to be a hard, and long, night. They didn’t need to be more stressed than they had to be.

**_At Wildcat Muay Thai and Kickboxing in the Glades……._ **

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Ted Grant’s POV)

When they had talked about what he would be doing, it did not seem like a particularly bad idea for him to hold some people from the houses near the Glades. But he didn’t know what to do to keep people from going stir-crazy. And then, one of the people in the neighborhood asked to be taught the basics of how to throw a punch.

“It’s rough living here, and we need to be able to take care of ourselves,” said Roy Harper, and Ted only knew that name because Roy had helped to build this ring with the tools from the local hardware store where he worked. “The Green Arrow and Black Canary can’t do it all for us. We have to be our own heroes sometimes.”

That was a good sentiment. Without even thinking about it, Ted dropped himself into what he thought of as “sensei mode”. It had served him well with Laurel and with Oliver the brief time he had trained him before he realized Ben Turner would serve that role better. This Roy Harper had the look, and carriage, of a hero. If he could get him up to speed on what he knew, and what Ben Turner knew, this could be something.

It was going to be a long night, but that doesn’t mean something good couldn’t come out of it.

**_Back at Merlyn Global Group……._ **

\---------------------------------------------------------

Almost immediately, the Green Arrow kicked the door in and he and the Black Canary went through the door with an overabundance of caution. Gone were the wild charges without properly knowing what they were walking into. Oliver, and Laurel, had been here enough times to know what looked like threats and what wasn’t. Going room-by-room, an arrow drawn and ready to fire, Oliver and Laurel finally made it into the conference room and saw what they were looking for.

Malcolm Merlyn and Katherine Kane-Merlyn. The Phantom and the Dark Archer. They were the same.

“Stop the bombs, Malcolm. You’ve gone far enough” said Laurel, standing in a sunken rooster stance as Oliver stood by her side, a jade-green arrow nocked and ready to fire.

“Don’t you get it? You can’t save the Glades, Green Arrow. And neither can you, Black Canary. The Glades isn’t worth saving. But if you insist on trying, you can watch as it burns in front of you. With your last breaths before I put you poor, sad, children out of your misery you can see it all fall. Heroism is pointless, and we will make sure you understand that” Malcolm Merlyn said, and both Laurel and Oliver could hear the grief and pain below the bluster. They could almost feel sorry for him, almost hear in him the Malcolm they knew and loved as kids. But then, they remembered who he was now. The Malcolm they liked died when Rebecca did, and this monster in front of them did not deserve that love. He deserved a jail cell, and to pay for what he had done and was about to do.

And so, the battle was joined.

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Sunken Rooster had been a deliberate style choice. From everything Ted had told her about the reputations of the 12 Brothers of Silk, choosing Sunken Rooster to battle against one of their students would be the equivalent of slapping someone in the face. She wanted Katherine Kane-Merlyn to know she was unafraid, even if she didn’t know who was behind the hood of the hapkido dobok.

“Come to try again, birdie?” Katherine mockingly stated, even as she got back into her Eagle Claw stance.

“I’ve come to teach you a lesson,” Laurel said in response, and soon the fight began. It didn’t start hot, because Laurel knew that was precisely what her opponent wanted. Ben Turner, and Ted Grant, had been invaluable in telling her about the methods of the 12 Brothers of Silk. From everything she had picked up, Master Hong Chou Ran was a truly gifted trainer and martial artist. But he had one rather gigantic Persian flaw, and she was planning on capitalizing on it.

They were taught to be aggressive. Not just normally aggressive, but to an almost manic degree. So, she realized, the way to beat her was to not meet aggression with more aggression. Instead, she would starve it out. Almost immediately, Katherine Kane-Merlyn decided to commit and press the issue. Laurel immediately ran through her Wing-Chun blocks and counters, like she was sparring with a white belt who was just doing the stuff she had seen on the internet or cheap kung fu movies. If not for the fact that it would be so predictable, it was so very sad. If her master had taught her the value of defensive fighting, of counterstrikes, this would not be as easy as it was about to become. But then, Laurel thought, if you choose your sensei when you are angry this is what you get. Deciding to continue her strategy, she then dropped her hands behind her back and evaded strikes using only her head and upper body movement. It was working. She could sense Katherine getting tired, and getting reckless as a result. It was time now, time to end this.

So, as the Phantom tired, the Black Canary only grew stronger. She wasn’t playing games anymore. Too much had been done. Too many people had been hurt at her hand, and her father’s hand, for this to just be a cute little sparring session. So, she got it over with. Blocking a thoroughly sloppy open-palm blow Laurel countered with a spinning back-leg hook kick followed by a jumping double inside crescent kick, and then a twisting butterfly kick that sent Katherine Kane-Merlyn to the floor in sections.

“Lesson taught.”

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Laurel had done what she said she would. Now, it was his turn. The Dark Archer, for as good as he was, had beaten him because he was distracted. He had been so worried about Laurel that his defenses were down. Now, though, Malcolm Merlyn had his full attention. So, he nocked a smoke trick arrow, aimed, and fired.

The smoke was a tribute to the Tokugawa period of feudal Japan, and it did what it was supposed to. In the distraction, he put his bow down and moved to use the silat techniques Ben Turner had taught him. Gritting his teeth, he had to admit that Malcolm was very skilled with his hands. But Malcolm was defined by his grief and his fury. That made his attacks reckless, and powerful, but easy to time.

And he was timing them. Before too long, the face of the Dark Archer was bruised and battered. It was time to put this to an end. Moving with the speed of a gunslinger in the Old West, Oliver drew a tranquilizer arrow and fired. It plunged into Merlyn’s thigh and left him unconscious.

His work was done. Their work was done.

Now to call the FBI, and leave.

**_Outside the Merlyn Global Group…._ **

\--------------------------------------------------------

(Barry Allen’s POV)

He had to see them. He had gone long enough without letting what he had done be known to anyone. Kara didn’t even know, largely because they had just come out of that whole Myriad thing and it didn’t really seem like the right time. But here he was regardless. And it looked like he had shown up at just the right time. The Green Arrow and the Black Canary had done what they were supposed to. They had taken their first steps towards heroism, and it was past time he showed them their gift.

So, as Oliver and Laurel left, he knew where they’d get out. He knew that they would have some memory of him.

And then, he saw Oliver. But as he moved to speed towards them, he saw something else. He saw the smirk on Malcolm Merlyn’s face as he pulled out what looked like a detonator, and knew what it was. Instantly, he went up the building, through the window, and shoulder-checked Malcolm into the wall. Grabbing the detonator, Barry rushed back down to Oliver and Laurel and took his mask off.

“Hello, Ollie,” he said, warmth and joy on his face.

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Whoever this man made of lightning was, he knew Oliver. That was clear. But he didn’t know why he was here now.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

(Barry Allen’s POV)

He had hoped this would be easy. So, he just…. touched the Green Arrow and watched as Oliver remembered everything. When it was done, Oliver Queen had one question.

“Why?”

That was easy to answer.

“Because I saw you at the end, at Crisis, and you told me that you were at peace. But you deserved so much more, so much better, than the life you got. With all you gave, all you sacrificed, you deserved the chance at true love. We all know what Laurel means to you. All I did was give you the chance to have it.”

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

There were parts of that old Green Arrow that would be with him now. But there was something he wanted to do now that the old Green Arrow would have never done.

He walked over, and he hugged Barry.

“Thank you, Barry. Thank you for giving me the connection I needed. Anything you need, anytime you need it, I’m here.”

**_At the Easley Bridge……_ **

\----------------------------------------------

(???????’s POV)

It was time. The Green Arrow had saved the city, saved HER. But this Black Canary? That wouldn’t do.

She needed to be his partner, not her. Time to solve the problem.

So, she made the promise to herself. She would be the Arrowette, and she would show the Green Arrow who he really needed to be devoted to.


End file.
